


Finding Home

by dirtylittlegreasemonkey



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Teenage Aaron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:43:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 58,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7213726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtylittlegreasemonkey/pseuds/dirtylittlegreasemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. It's the end of 2010. Almost a year before, after a long relationship with Victoria Sugden, Aaron came out. Their relationship had dissolved into an awkward state and then she discovered his internet history and everything made sense. His acceptance of it, after much confusion, anger and upset, was aided by the support of her and best friend Adam. Aaron's starting to think about the future and his sexuality but Victoria is driving everyone crazy with her excitement of one thing - her brother Robert is returning home after more than five years away. When Robert crosses paths with Aaron, the attraction and antagonism is immediate, but it's not long before Aaron finds out Robert's biggest secret and that might just change everything between them.</p><p>(Rated Explicit for later chapters)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aaron

**Author's Note:**

> Takes creative license with Aaron's sexuality angst - his coming out is a lot more gentle and less angst ridden than canon events. I hope it works for you. I've tried to stick to some canon from 2010 (e.g. Aaron lives with Paddy) but there will be differences. Multiple-chapter, will aim to update at least once a fortnight! Chapters will vary between Aaron's POV and Robert's.
> 
> For Jade :). Comments and encouragement greatly appreciated.

 

**Aaron**

 

Vic’s on a mad one when he goes round to the pub backroom. Cushions from the sofa all over the floor. A collection of cleaning liquids lined up on the kitchen worktop. Her head in a cupboard, digging around for something or other. He knocks on the door and loiters in the doorway, hands balled in the pockets of his loose trackie bottoms. He moves his thumb to pick at the skin around one of his fingernails, reminded of the conversation they’d had in this very room almost a year ago.

He wasn’t sure what made him open up to her and swear her to complete secrecy and loyalty. But once their romantic relationship had dissolved - from a combination of disinterest and awkward excuses -  she’d asked him, tentatively about websites she’d accidentally seen on his internet history and he was left with little choice.  He’d refuted it at first, until the rage of denying it had twisted him red and raw and he battered the door down at Smithy just to escape her questions. But later, when he’d gone to the pub to find her and trying and explain himself, apologising with wet eyes and holding her hands, pleading with her not to tell anyone – he felt like he might be able to trust her. The whole of him had opened, caving into a blackhole of fear and sickness.

She’d put her arms round him. “You know I wouldn’t have any problem with it, if you are,” she’d said, rubbing his back as if she was his mother rather than an ex. “Do you think you are?”

He shrugged, a weighty sigh turning his quiet sobs into hiccups.

“It's not because of me, is it?” she said, putting her head on his shoulder. How easy it would have been to stroke back her dark hair and pretend. How impossible. “I didn’t do anything wrong.?”

“No,” he said. “It’s me. I’m the wrong one.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said, pulling away from him to shake at his shoulders. She had these big eyes, so bright and glassy. She made him believe her. “You can’t help the way you feel. And if you’re gay, then you’re gay. It doesn’t matter. You’re still Aaron to me.”

Perhaps it hadn’t happened as neatly and as straightforwardly as he remembered it. Perhaps there had been more days of crying and his fists hitting walls and verbal denials that were so violent his words had shocked them both. But in the end, she told him she loved him no matter what and even if he couldn’t quite listen and believe it – he heard it over and above his other memories. And then, over time he’d told more people. There was no fanfare, no disgust, no disownment. He was eighteen. He was Aaron. The rest they could stay out of.

“The Queen coming, is she?” Aaron says, taking another glance around at the chaos in the room. “Diane’ll have a fit if she sees all this, you know.”

“I’m cleaning up!” Victoria says with an open gesture of her arms like it’s obvious.

“No, seriously – what’s all this for?” Aaron moves around the room, picking up a cushion he’s not seen before and looks far too sequinned to be anything Diane would choose.

Victoria sighed with all the theatricality of a pantomime and removed herself from the kitchen, hands on hips. “Remember I told you about my brother?” She starts nodding at him like that’ll jog his memory. “The one that isn’t Andy.” She rolls her eyes.

“What about him?” Aaron says spinning the cushion in his hands. There are enough photographs of Robert around the place so Aaron isn’t completely clueless who this absentee brother is of hers – and of course there are all the rumours, past histories that no one likes to talk about but the ones everyone knows. Aaron’s never met him, not properly anyway. He was only a kid when Robert was around before, when he was busy shagging his brother’s wife. The photos of him are before then, times that his family actually want to remember him by – impish teen grins and oversized jumpers. Vic always gets a fuzzy look in her eyes when she talks about him but Aaron doesn’t believe the hype about anyone, especially not when it’s Victoria getting carried away. She was only ten when he left and she’s the only one who seems excited that he might be visiting. That says it all.

“He’s coming tonight!” she says, unable to stop the excitement from making her body all jittery. “I mean, I’m not sure what time, because his flight could be delayed and he’s got to get a taxi…but he’s coming tonight!”

Aaron tries to raise a smile for her; he’s happy for her, he really is. But he can’t help but think that however much she’s been looking forward to seeing this Wonder Brother of hers, there’s only one way high expectations can go and that’s disappointment.

*

When he emerges from the backroom of the pub, it’s a relief to see Adam propped up at the bar. He’d only gone round to see her to get back a DVD he’d lent her but having seen the frenzy she was in, he’d left without it. He raises his eyebrows at Adam and settles on a stool next to him.

“What’s wrong?” Adam says, laughing at his expression.

He orders a pint. He needs it. “Women.”

“I didn’t think that was your problem these days,” Adam says, gently and with enough of a smile that it doesn’t even begin to bother him. Adam knows his limits and doesn’t seem to push him. It’s a relief to have a mate like that. One who even offered to go with him to a gay bar and didn’t force him when he couldn’t even make it through the door.

“Oh ha-ha,” he says. “No, it’s Vic. She’s got the house turned upside down trying to make it perfect for this _amazing_ brother of hers. You know – the one that had a mullet.” He mimes it. He’s being slightly harsh to the guy there with that dig, because he wasn’t exactly _bad_ looking.

“Right, yeah,” Adam says. “It must be hard though, you know. She idolises him and she’s not seen him in five years. I couldn’t imagine that with my sisters.”

“Says the guy who’s always moaning about ‘em.” Aaron gives him a playful shove.

“God, it’s dead in here,” Adam says half swivelling on his stool.

“It’s a Tuesday night and it’s never exactly banging in, is it?”

“We should go into town,” Adam says. “Sometime later in the week maybe.”

Aaron’s gaze slips into the foam of his pint and he feels his shoulders give a half-slump. He knows what Adam means; he thinks it’s about time Aaron got out of their village bubble.

“It doesn’t have to be _that_ bar, you know.” He lowers voice while he says it.

“Why does it have to be any bar? What’s wrong with here?”

Adam scoffs. “Just take a look mate. You’re never gonna meet anyone around here.”

“Yeah and who says I need to meet anyone?” Aaron says. “I’m eighteen. I don’t need to walk into some bar and devote myself to the first bloke I meet for the rest of my life. I just want to have a laugh.”

“Yeah and you’re not exactly gonna do that when the only available bloke in here is Sandy!”

They both laugh and Aaron shudders. There’s a part of him that knows Adam’s right, that he needs to get out into the real world. It’s not like he hasn’t been tempted to take the bus into town by himself – less of an event that way – but it’s always the fear that outweighs the curiosity. And he _is_ curious. He’s let his mind wander a few times when he’s in the garage on his own or in the evening when Smithy’s dead quiet and he can just close his eyes. He doesn’t know who he pictures, or who he likes or what he’d feel if a bloke tried to chat him up or touch him. But he knows he feels something. There. Pit of his stomach. Knees. Back of his neck. Everywhere else. And now that he knows better than to leave his internet history undeleted he’s looked, watched. It doesn’t do much, but it does _something_ and it satisfies for a few quick minutes to clear his head, confirm who he is. What he likes.

Victoria emerges from the back about half an hour later, her hair slipping raggedly from a ponytail. She looks at the lads for a moment, almost as if they’re not in front of her, staring at her pink and flustered face and then she crouches to look at the selection of wine under the bar.

“Excuse me young lady,” Moira says from behind the bar once she’s finished handing over a customer’s change. “What do you think you’re doing?”

As if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, Victoria rolls her eyes and stands now with two bottles in her hands. “What does it look like?”

“I hope you’re not thinking of drinking them.”

“’Course not,” she says, again with another eye roll. “And I’ve squared it with Diane so you don’t need to worry about that.” She turns towards Aaron and Adam who both know better than to talk back to Moira like Victoria has been. “What do you think?” she asks. “Red or white? Which is better?”

Aaron grimaces, he’s strictly a lager, cider, spirits sort of guy. “For what?”

“For Robert. Duh,” she says. “What do you think he’d like?”

“How are we meant to know?” Aaron says.

“No you’re probably right,” she says, eyeing them both. “I wouldn’t expect the two of you to understand. My brother’s a grown up.” And with that, Victoria opts for the red wine and swivels on the spot.

Aaron looks at Adam, brow raised.

“You weren’t lying, mate.”

“It’s all she’s been banging on about,” Aaron says. “ _My brother, the businessman. My brother runs a company in Spain, my brother…_ ”

“Spain, really?” Adam says, his voice lilting with surprise.

“Apparently,” Aaron says. “Although if you listen to Vic, the sun shines out of his arse and all.”

Adam grows silent, his head seemingly stuck in this fantasy of running a business in Spain – Aaron can see it ticking over in his head. But he’s not buying it. If life’s so perfect for Robert Sugden then why is he even coming home; he’s stayed away for this long. And Aaron doesn’t believe it’s his heart calling him home, that he’s had a sudden surge of love for his family.

*

He finishes a second pint and decides to call it a night. Adam’s bleating on about some prank video on YouTube which Aaron couldn’t care less about and he’s done moaning about work, he’s done listening to Adam moan about the farm. He zips up his coat and gives a half-hearted goodbye to Adam and heads out of the pub. Vic’s buzzed back and forth a few times, _Just checking he’s not shown up yet_ she says and he already can’t cope with this focus of attention on Robert’s return.  

He walks along the street, unfocused and hunched with the cold of the December night. Lights are dimmed in most of the houses and he smiles to himself thinking about his earlier conversation with Adam. Maybe he could do with getting out more. Getting away from this place at any rate.

There’s a blast of a horn behind him, lights flashed which make his shadow long and pointed. The horn is pressed again, in a stutter of bursts like the driver has his fist on the wheel. Aaron turns and shields his eyes from the glare with his arm and has to dive back onto the grass verge so he’s not knocked into.

“Knobhead!” he shouts, gesturing at the car with his middle finger. As it passes, he smacks his hand on the low roof of the soft-top. Poncy – he thinks. Show off. Who drives around a village like this at night? Dick.

Aaron thinks about legging it when the car slows and pulls over, but he isn’t afraid of anyone that drives a convertible like that. More money than sense, or taste. Anyone who drives something like that has got to be compensating for something, he reckons.

The driver doesn’t roll the window down and give him a mouthful of abuse like he expects, instead the door opens and Aaron watches him get out. It’s dark, but the light from the streetlamps glow on the toes of the bloke’s shined leather shoes and his suit trousers flap and stretch as he stands up out of the car. He isn’t that tall, but Aaron takes a step back anyway.

“What you playing at?” he says, distinctly northern and not the plummy age Aaron expected him to be. “Are you blind or just flaming stupid?”

Aaron looks at the man’s face for the first time. He’d kept his gaze down, scowled, snarled. But his look is fleeting, barely seeing the guy’s face at all. He just wants to grab him by those posh lapels and ask him who the fuck he thinks he is. He’d smacked someone at college for less.

“Me stupid? I’m not the one doing forty in a village at night, mate!”

“It’s a road, _mate_. Public footpath’s that way,” the man says, pointing. He moves his head and Aaron watches the amber glow divide the shadows on his face. His jaw, the strong angular sweep of it, clenches and then he’s back in shadow again. White swirls of breath between them. Cold air and the hot hammering of riled heartbeats.

Aaron doesn’t budge and this time he’s looking at the man’s face, the short fair crop of his hair. The broad, solidly held shoulders. His thoughts are stilled, frustration muted. Inside his pockets his hands are balled but he feels the weight of them drop. Even though the man’s frown narrows his eyes and his chin is tilted to look down on Aaron, there’s a layer of heat juddering around inside Aaron’s stomach. The juddering could move to his fists, could fuel anger and displace different, unknown feelings but it doesn’t budge, just hangs there in the silence. The man has pinprick freckles on his cheeks and there’s something about his face that’s familiar, known, but it doesn’t clarify. It’s like a face in water’s reflection and the surface won’t still.

Then a voice, footsteps running behind them.

“Robert!” Victoria cries and as soon as her voice hits the air, she’s between them, running into the driver’s arms. He squeezes her, pressing her excited chattering into his arms and Aaron watches on, piecing it all together.

It’s Robert Sugden. Back in Emmerdale. Back home. Looking over his sister’s shoulder and giving Aaron’s confused scowl a smug, arrogant smirk.  

 

 

 


	2. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert adjusts to being back in Emmerdale but it feels anywhere but home. As Vic grills him about his life in Spain, he keeps the truth hidden from her and is thrown when she reveals that the "local thug" he met is gay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your continued support and the patience for updates! Hope you enjoy!

**Robert**

 

The first few hours pass in a blur of his own anecdotes. As soon as he’s out of the car, and dodged the chavvy lad giving him abuse, Robert has his arms round his kid sister. She wants all his stories, all his travels. She wants a quick look at his swanky car and a ruffle of his designer haircut and smooths down the shoulders of his newly tailored coat. Being back in Emmerdale he sees the ghosts of the past in every glance, the boy he was, the lad he grew into, left behind. He feels it pressing on his skull for a second but he pushes it aside for more stories, more tales that make his chest broader and his stature taller. He’s lived a life, seen the world, worked until his limbs ache and his head pounds from exhaustion.

Vic keeps squeezing him, saying the words which don’t ring true. _You’re home. You’re home._ The chavvy lad looks on, trackies tucked into his socks. He has his hands stuffed into the front pocket of his hoodie, his eyes shadowed by a cemented scowl.

“You can keep on walking, mate,” Robert says to him, with his arms still wrapped round Vic. What idiot walks in the middle of a country road in pitch black?

Vic’s brow crumples and she turns to look back at the lad and then tuts, eyes back on Rob. She gives him a brief shove. “That’s Aaron,” she says and gives him a look that suggests he’s meant to remember who Aaron is. Truth is, he’s been drifting. Disconnected. He doesn’t pay any attention to Facebook and he half listens to their phone conversations when he should be hearing every word. But Vic talks about teenage girl things and home and he’s so far beyond that now it feels like a step back. But returning here now, it’s on his own terms, even if it’s reluctant, it’s temporary. This Aaron is meaningless. As meaningless as Emmerdale is to him now.

“And this,” - Vic says, presenting Robert to him – “is my big, flash brother, Robert.”

Aaron’s shoulders jut upwards and then down again. “Yeah I figured out that one all by myself.”

“Well,” she says to Robert. “Are you coming inside then, or what?”

“See you around,” Aaron says, skulking away and throwing one look back over his shoulder. Vic looks as if she wants to suggest he join them for a drink but Robert’s sneer must change her mind, because the hunched chavvy form of Aaron disappears down Main Street and Robert watches on, only realising Vic has headed towards the pub when she calls from the doorway.

*

Within days of being back in Emmerdale, indulging in Diane’s fry ups and absorbing the village’s swell of gossip it’s almost as if he never left. Victoria grills him on a daily basis about his future plans and how long he intends to stick around. He doesn’t have much of an answer for her. The itchiness he feels at wanting to find a flight out of the country would shatter his little sister’s dreams of a harmonious family unit so he keeps it vague and ladles her with an optimism he can’t connect to. Andy’s already made it clear he’s not interested in playing happy families and just suggests they keep out of each other’s way and that’s fine with him. Andy seems to be always up at Butler’s helping with the family that own the farm now and the last thing Robert is interested in is dragging up the years he’s left behind. Christmas looms and he knows Vic and Diane are casting hopeful gazes at the 25th on the calendar and making tuneful hums together about numbers and how big a turkey they might need.

Robert’s intentions here to all that will listen are simple: set up a sister company in the UK to his Spanish start-up and stabilise enough cash flow to buy himself the beautiful house he’s seen in Madrid. He’s thought about suggesting it to his girlfriend, Camila – that they make it a joint venture – but if he’s going to do it properly then she’ll expect a proposal first. It’s on the agenda. Once he’s sweet talked her father into reshuffling his investments and convincing him to consider investing in the UK branch. He has his ways of convincing, although Camila’s savvy enough to know when the show and the ceremony is for her father’s benefit. _He’ll have enough faith in you in time,_ she says, in that beautifully accented way of hers. But Robert doesn’t do patience.

“So where is she then?” Victoria says to him one early evening when they’ve spread out in a booth of the pub. There are already decorations up in time for Christmas and the familiar jangles of Wham and Band Aid on in the background. It’s probably the same CD as when he left. Marlon has additions to the menu that have a half-hearted seasonal twist. Everything comes with cranberry sauce or eggnog. It makes Robert long for Spain again.

“Who?” he says, mouth around the foam of his beer and eyes on the door of the pub in case anyone of interest comes in. A new face, a bit of salacious gossip that takes the heat off his return. There are too many old faces here still, ones that remember him as some stupid little kid or pathetically love struck wife stealer. He even had Pearl give him the once over with her specs lowered, telling him she hoped he hadn’t come back to cause any trouble. Andy has just got his life back on track apparently. It’s not like he goes looking for trouble, it just seems to find him, to creep into the corners of his life and make it impossible to avoid.

“Errr this girlfriend of yours! Duh,” she says, complete with eyeroll as she leans forward and slurps her overpriced mocktail she convinced him to buy her. “Camilla or whatever she’s called.”

“It’s Camila,” he says, pronouncing her name properly and turns in his seat to face his sister. “She’s still working. She’s a company co-director, she can’t just pack up and come over.”

“But she is coming, right? You haven’t just, I don’t know, made her up.”

“You’ve seen a picture!”

“And?” she says. “Your relationships don’t normally last five minutes.”

Robert puts down his pint. The fondness towards his grown-up and huffy teenage sister soon disappearing. Clearly she’s been spending too much time in the company of golden boy, Andy. “And whose been telling you that? You were only a kid when I left.”

“Everyone knows it,” she says with a shrug. He can’t win against her. Time moves slowly here. Everything with Andy and Katie feels to him like a lifetime ago, but for the rest of them with their sad little lives, it wasn’t five minutes since he ripped the Sugdens apart.

“I don’t see you fighting them off,” he says, going on the defensive. He sees his words scratch at her hormonal insecurities for a moment and then, just like he does, sees her bolster against it.

“What would you know?” she says. “You don’t even live here.” She folds her arms, trying to look like she doesn’t care, only he knows the second he starts thinking about a one-way ticket out of the UK she’ll be clinging to him and begging him to stay.

He’s about to spin her some retort, the equivalent of a big brother pulling his sister’s hair but the swinging open of the pub door catches his eye. Robert looks over and then sees Victoria doing the same.

“Oh please don’t tell me…him?!”

It’s Aaron again, looking over at their table and then jerking his eyes up and away, slumping over to the bar. A tracksuit again, hands pulled into the black pocket of a hoodie and a permanent scowl. Robert laughs to himself – of all the lads for his sister to be hung up on, it has to be the one who looks like a walking ASBO with the personality to match.

“Does he ever smile?” Robert asks and tries and fails to picture it. He cranes his neck back, seeing Aaron order and wait for a pint, biting at his bottom lip as he fidgets with the keys on his phone.

Victoria tuts. “Not him,” she says. “He’s history.”

“Good,” Robert says. “I mean, you might be desperate but really, the local thug?”

“He’s not a thug,” she says. “He’s lovely. Kind-hearted.”

“If you say so.”

“And anyway, it’s not like he’s interested in me.”

There’s something odd about the way she says that, leaves the words loose in the air, that makes him want to know more. The itch of gossip. Her eyes are wide and glassy and Robert looks over to Aaron again, sitting alone. What is it about him? This angry and Rottweiler appearance, hiding this apparent kind heart? But if anyone asked him he’d say Victoria was naïve and too trusting. Perhaps appearances aren’t deceptive. People can be who they seem.

“Well, you know,” she says, the words coming out in deep, quiet breaths. She taps him repeatedly on the arm. “Don’t stare!”

“I’m not!”

Her eyes are boring into Robert like he’s expected to fill in the gaps of this great mystery. He’s a Dingle, he’s Chas’s wayward son that she couldn’t be bothered to look after – he’s bound to have bigger things he’s involved in than teenage girls. Drugs, gangs – that sort of thing.

“Go on, what is it?” he says.

“He’s gay!”

He laughs. Because it’s all he feels he can do. He doesn’t tell her she’s being ridiculous or that he can’t believe it, that the label can’t possibly fit a guy like Aaron. He doesn’t say anything of the things expected of him. He can’t even offer her a twenty-first century take on the revelation – a _So?_ or a _Good for him._ He doesn’t know what to say. It doesn’t feel shocking or surprising or strange. It feels too close for comfort. It feels like somehow it’s an answer to a question he didn’t know existed.

“It’s not funny,” she says. “It’s true.”

By then the laughter’s dried up with his words and he just stares right back at her, nodding. He feels skewed. What if Aaron can sense something about him too?

“Ugh. Don’t get all weird about it,” she says, finishing up her drink. “Just because he fancies men doesn’t mean he’s going to jump on you, you know. What is it with you blokes?”

His fingers are on the cold pint glass, running across the condensation like drizzle. He only catches glimmers of her words. He’s thinking about two weeks ago. Camila was out of the city. He was bored, drinking alone in a bar not in his usual district. There were a few ex-pats around talking loudly about football. One of them broke away from the group, grinned at Robert in that half- drunk way and asked why he was so smartly dressed. Business meeting. Did it go well? It was the worst meeting he’d ever had. The guy turned his attention away from his friends and asked if Robert wanted to drown his sorrows. And he did. Several times. Once in the guy’s living room and then in his bed.

And then Robert went home to his empty apartment. Re-lived the disastrous meeting of the night before. Re-lived how he might have just fucked up his entire company. Re-lived how he’d cheated on his girlfriend. Again.

He couldn’t stop himself. Trouble found him.

*

He’s in the pub’s toilets, washing his hands. He’s managed to shake off Victoria and she bubbled with excitement when he finally tied himself to spending Christmas in Emmerdale. Truth was, what other choice did he have? If he went back to Spain Camila would be able to see through his grand plans and the strained efforts he was making with her father to get some cash to save the business. He’d been lying to himself since arriving. If he had to do something right then he wanted to give his sister a good Christmas. To have as much of the family together as possible was the one thing she wanted the most. Then somehow he’d have to find the cash to get out of there without everyone finding out what a failure he was.

“Why don’t we go big?” Robert had said, trying to steer the conversation away from gossip and sexuality. He’d watched as Aaron had collected his pint and moved out of his eye line.

“What do you mean?” Vic said. “Diane’s got it all covered.”

“No, I mean a party,” Robert said, gesturing the scale of it with his hands. “Christmas Eve. A big party. I’m sure you can sweet talk Auntie Val into renting us the B&B.”

“I’m not sure Eric will agree,” Vic said. “You might have to slip him some of your millions!”

Robert shifted. “I’m sure you can act up,” he said, resisting the urge to tell her to play the dead dad card. “You know, finally getting the family back together. That sort of thing.”

“I’m not sure…”

“Vic, it’ll work. Trust me.”

As he shakes his hands dry in the men’s, thinking about how he can convince Pollard to let them rent the B&B for free, Aaron walks in. His trainers squeak on the floor and his whistling stops. He takes a step back; Robert realises he’s staring again.

“What - you gonna watch me piss now?” he says and Robert’s eyes dart away like he’s been caught in a fire.

Robert reaches for a paper towel, turning his back so as not to keep watching Aaron and dries finger after finger.

“Is this attitude normal behaviour for you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aaron asks. His voice is gruff, humourless.

“The face, the constant glaring.”

Aaron shrugs, standing with his back to Robert at the urinal.

“Well,” Robert says, tossing the towel into the bin. The only sound between their heavy silence is the scrunched paper hitting the base of the bin. “As enlightening as this conversation has been…”

“Heard about the party,” Aaron says, his voice stopping Robert in his tracks. “Sounds good.” He turns his head and the shaved back of his hair looks like velvet.

“What?”

“Vic invited me,” Aaron says, zipping up and heading to the sink. His mouth contains the smug smile of someone bursting with satisfaction at having won the war. “So I guess I’ll be seeing you there.” His gum chewing intensifies and he grins, finally, brushing past Robert as he leaves. Because what friends would Vic want to invite? He doesn’t know why he hadn’t realised sooner. When he’d told her to invite who she wanted to this party, he hadn’t meant him.

But there was one answer. Robert thinks, standing there alone in the bathroom again without a comeback. Aaron does smile.

      

 


	3. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron still can't stand Robert Sugden, even if he's only trying to help and then at the Christmas Eve party, Aaron can't get his head around what he sees.

**Aaron**

 

He’s king of the garage this lunchtime. Cain’s on some trip and everyone else is bunking – using up their early Christmas holiday. They’re only doing emergency work – that means customers willing to pay over the odds - and it’s a slow day. He’s got a tea in hand, the radio playing Shakin’ Stevens and there’s Christmas Eve-Eve coldness seeping under his overalls keeping him up and moving about. He feels surprisingly festive, if only because he had a sneaky look at in Paddy’s terribly hidden stash of presents and found the Nike trainers he wanted waiting for him. He’d been practising his aloof yet grateful reaction in his head all morning and then pictured lacing them up, taking them for a walk around the village. Once upon a time he might’ve convinced himself he wanted them to look smart for girls, but as for now? It wasn’t as if there was anyone around worth impressing.

Around lunchtime Adam shows up and hands him a barely-warm panini from the café. Viv’s not doing festive themed lunches this year apparently so it’s plain ham and cheese. It beats the sarnie he made himself in the morning.

“You legend, mate!” he says, tearing into it with his teeth and leaning back on the bonnet of Mr Earle’s Nissan. He’s their best customer and it’s one unreliable mess of a car.

“Busy day is it?” Adam asks. “I saw you, whistling away back there.”

“Bored out of my head,” Aaron says, grateful for a bit of company. “How comes you’re not working?”

“Dad’s given me the day off,” Adam says with a shrug, joining Aaron to lean on the bonnet. “I had some last minute shopping to do. You know how it is.”

“You should do what I do,” Aaron says, words garbled up by warm bread. “Stick a tenner in a card. Done.”

Adam scoffs, laughing. “And Chas is okay with that, is she?”

“Well it’s that or nothing so…” Aaron shrugs.

Adam laughs and then stops as if a thought has smacked him in the face. “Mate, are you taking anything tomorrow night?”

Aaron widens his eyes at him. “Tomorrow night…?”

“You know!” he says. “Banging party at the BnB! Vic invited us, remember?”

“Oh. That,” Aaron says and then smirking to himself as he remembers the look on Robert Sugden’s face when he revealed he’d been invited too. Smug git. That expression of horror was ridiculously satisfying and there’s this niggle inside of him that makes him far keener to go to the party than he’d normally feel. Just to piss off Robert more.

“So are we meant to bring beer or something? I mean, Vic said Robert had it covered but he might have just got all that poncy stuff – you know? Wine and champagne. Stuff no one likes.”

Aaron rolls his eyes and tosses the paper bag his panini came in into the bin. “Probably,” he said. “The man’s a twat.”

“I thought he might be cool, you know? What with him being into his business and making all the dough. But seriously?”

“He just thinks he’s better than everyone else,” Aaron says. “But if he’s this big man, why’s he back here, eh?”

Adam doesn’t seem to be in the mood to start inventing conspiracy theories and distractedly begins peering into Mr Earle’s car at the new leather interior. “Well,” - he says – “I suppose Vic’s happy he’s here. That’s one thing.”

It’s true – Vic’s still made up Robert’s around. Aaron hasn’t heard the end of it. She has this huge family Christmas round and can’t stop grinning whenever he bumps into her. She’s like the walking talking embodiment of Christmas spirit and as much as Aaron likes seeing her happy, if her brother lets her down – which wouldn’t seem all that surprising – the fall to earth is going to hit her hard.

“Yeah and she seems to be the only one,” Aaron says, nudging Adam out of the way so he can crack on with the job. It’s going to be a long day.

*

Mr Earle picked up his car at three and after a call out to pick up some idiot’s break down, Aaron’s been working on that with a gruff and reluctant promise to the customer that he’d have it done by the end of the day. It’s nearing five and by this rate he’ll still be working on it at eight. It’s barely road worthy, the engine isn’t giving him so much as a tick of encouragement and the cold of the garage has now made his fingers impractically numb.

The main phone in the office keeps ringing and he dashes back and forth to answer it but when he misses the call, it diverts to Cain’s mobile so he’s already had several pissed off texts from him wanting to know why he’s messing around or being lazy. After a few choice words in reply, he’s got his head in the bonnet again, losing grip on the wrench in his hand and fiddling with the lose connecters when he drops the wrench and smacks his head as he bends down to retrieve it.

He’s calling the car a piece of shit when he looks up and sees a figure walking across his eye line. The noise must have made them stop because as Aaron rubs the back of his head he sees them watching, smirking. His vision clears. It’s Robert Sugden. Of course it is. Tosser.

Aaron feels every need burning inside him wanting to call out and say that to his face, but the guy keeps on walking. Ask him exactly what his problem is. That cocky swagger of his in some designer leather jacket. He always seems to be around, on every corner with a permanent grin on his face like everything’s a joke to him. Aaron can’t work out if it’s personal, he just feels the guy’s got it in for him, like he’s laughing at him. Maybe it’s paranoia, his pressing self-consciousness but Aaron half wonders – when he’s at his most insecure – if Victoria’s let slip about the gay thing and Robert sees it as some sort of weakness. Aaron was the same once – seeing it as some great flaw. He’d sense it on other lads and be quick to join in any taunting in case someone smelt it on him too. He wonders if that’s why he’s so reluctant to set foot in a gay bar if this gut reaction will make him hostile and nasty to anyone who might look at him for a little too long. He doesn’t want to be that guy, picking fights and sneering at guys who might’ve been just like him once. But fighting this instinct is hard enough. He still finds it hard to be himself, to allow himself to want what he wants without any guilt attached.

Ten minutes later Robert’s back again but this time he’s not hanging around in the distance, he’s sidled up to Aaron without him even noticing until Robert’s that bit too close, leaning against the car. Interfering of course, because he couldn’t leave things.

“You’re still at it then,” he says. That smile again.

“Well spotted,” Aaron says, scoffing. Captain obvious. Robert has none of Vic’s softness and his spikiness reveals itself in mocking observations.

The smell of oil on Aaron’s fingers hits the spicy scent of Robert’s aftershave. It’s too much and Aaron moves away, to the side of the car so he’s no longer under Robert’s scrutiny. But Robert doesn’t seem to get the hint and moves in, leaning into the engine to have a look. Aaron notices he has two cups of takeaway coffee in his hands.

“Have you checked the fuel filter?” he says and then looks up at Aaron, lips quirking. “I _did_ used to work here, you know.”

“It’s not the fuel filter,” Aaron says, standing there with his arms folded. He hadn’t got round to checking that yet but he wasn’t going to tell that to Robert.

“Okay,” he says. “So it’s not the fuel filter.” He puts the coffees down on the ground and leans in more, fiddling with one of the connectors.

Aaron swoops in, pulling his hand away. “Look,” he says. “This is my job. Not yours, so butt out.”

“I was just checking the connectors!”

“And I’ve done that already. I’m not an idiot.”

“Clearly,” Robert says, smarting from Aaron’s shove out of the way and taking a step back. He crouches down to collect his coffee and looks down at them for a moment. That smiles gone, his lips pinched into a straight line. Aaron feels slightly glad about that.

He’s waiting for Robert to make some smart comment and then walk away with the upper hand again so Aaron busies himself, gets back to tinkering and trying to fix the engine, pretending Robert’s left already. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Robert move towards the table in the office.

“I thought you could do with this,” he says, indicating to the coffee he has left on the side. He stands, his body blocking a little of the blue-hued daylight coming in through the entrance. He pauses, lips slightly parted as if he has something more to say. Aaron holds his breath but all he hears is the sound of footsteps walking away.

And later, when he checks the fuel filter and finds it blocked, he can still taste the coffee, bitter and slightly sweet, in his mouth.

*

“Ooh!” Paddy says, cooing in the doorway of Aaron’s room. “What’s with the fancy new shirt? And the-“ he splutters mocking “-excess of aftershave?”

Aaron sneers at the reflection of Paddy in the mirror and then fidgets with the shirt. It’s slightly too big on the shoulders. “It’s not fancy. And it’s not that new.”

“Are you…” – Paddy ventures into the room like he’s on ice – “meeting someone?”

“Well if by someone you mean Adam, then yes.”

“Oh right. Not a date, then?”

“No!” Aaron says, voice flinching several octaves.

“Alright,” Paddy says, raising his hands in surrender and picking up the little toy Audi Aaron has on his chest of drawers. He wheels it around a bit. “No need to bite my head off.”

“And no need to give me the third degree every time I go out.”

“It’s a big deal Aaron. I’m only looking out for you.”

“Yeah and you’re the one making it a big deal. If I was going out to meet girls would you be this weird and nosy?”

Paddy tilts his head to the side, making a little “Well….” noise.

“It’s the Christmas Eve party,” Aaron says. “The one at the BnB.”

“Oh right,” Paddy says, nodding as if it’s all coming back to him. “Robert Sugden flashing his cash around then.”

Aaron grumbles. “Seems like it.”

“I’m surprised you wanted to go,” Paddy says.

“What d’you mean?”

“I can’t imagine you two being matey.”

“We’re not,” Aaron says. “Victoria invited me.”

“Right. Well, good.” Paddy taps the top of the car and turns to leave the room.

“You think he’s a prat too, then?”

“Who, Robert?”

Aaron nods, straightening out the tails of his shirt and wondering if it really is too much.

“Well put it this way, it doesn’t seem like he’s done a lot of growing up in the time he’s been away.”

*

Robert’s not on the door of the party greeting everyone like Aaron expects and there’s a small part of him that’s disappointed. He’d wanted to see the look of irritation on his face that Aaron had actually shown up after all. The downstairs of the BnB is decked out in something that resembles Santa’s grotto and by the look on Eric’s face, Aaron can only assume it’s Victoria’s handiwork.

“Welcome, welcome!” she says, her head bobbing with a tinsel wrapped set of deely boppers. “Can I interest you in a Crimbo Cocktail or an Eggnog Surprise?” She brandishes a tray in front of them and it’s obvious she’s been let loose on the drinks cabinet.

Aaron screws up his face. “Have you got anything…normal?”

She sighs, dramatically of course. Deely boppers thumping together. “Beer’s by the bar. Help yourself.”

Aaron heads over, pausing when he notices Adam’s been waylaid. And then he sees him and Victoria awkwardly shuffle round each other aware that there’s a coil of mistletoe hanging over the door. Aaron smirks to himself and sees Victoria duck away in a blush. Maybe one day, he thinks.

*

The party’s not exactly the best he’s been to but it’s not the worst either and Marlon’s spread of food keeps him satisfied for most of the night. Adam’s taken a liking to the mulled wine and has been hogging the karaoke (complete with festive costume) for the last three songs. There’s only so much _Last Christmas_ Aaron wants to hear before his ears bleed.

Robert’s been AWOL most of the night and when Aaron did see him, he was greeting some friends (he had those apparently) at the door and hadn’t even noticed Aaron was there. There wasn’t any opportunity for gloating or rubbing it in his face. The party has crowded and swollen with guests, most of whom Aaron had never seen before and so he sits at the bar, tossing peanuts into his mouth and throwing the odd one in Adam’s direction when he comes to retrieve his drink before belting his best Mariah with a lad they both know from Hotten.

The place smells of bodies and synthetic pine and despite Victoria’s best efforts, he definitely isn’t getting up for a dance.

“I bet if there was a fit guy here asking you, you would!” she says, teasing and pulling on his hand.

“Still no,” he says, taking another swig of beer and not reacting to her exaggerated pout. He shifts in his seat and that gives her a glimmer of hope before she corrects him. “I need a piss,” he says, leaving her to her eye rolling.

It looks as if the women have staked a claim on the downstairs bogs as a queue has formed outside so he decides to risk Eric’s wrath and shoot upstairs for a quick leak while no one’s looking. Victoria said upstairs was strictly forbidden as Eric only agreed to the use of the BnB if no one went anywhere near the rooms. The last thing he wanted to be doing on Christmas morning was cleaning out the rooms ready for the guests arriving on Boxing Day.

Aaron legs it down the corridor, gleefully pleased with himself for infiltrating these rules and heads to the nearest bathroom. Unthinkingly he turns the handle and pushes the door open, striding in without hesitation.

It takes only seconds to process what he sees, although when he thinks about it later it feels like hours. It feels like he’s staring at Robert’s mouth for hours. Robert’s position. He thinks about the dusty pink carpet in the BnB bathroom, Robert in dark jeans, kneeling on that carpet. His eyes are closed and then open. Startled. Horrified. The guy he’s with. The guy. The guy who’s cock Robert has in his mouth, jerks away at the noise. Robert’s mouth is red and wet and open. He stands shakily and the guy laughs, a loud, drunken laugh. Robert stumbles and Aaron backs up, backs away, pulling the door closed and runs. Runs. Down the corridor. Through the party crowds. Out the door. Runs.

 

 


	4. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the Christmas Eve party Robert is confused and tormented by dreams and the fear of what Aaron now knows. Has Aaron told anyone? And how can he get Aaron to keep quiet?

**Robert**

Victoria’s up and about already. He can hear her moving around downstairs, clanging pans about, probably in an attempt to make a big family breakfast. He can’t think of anything worse than the grease hitting the pits of his stomach or the smiles that’ll be expected of him. He can hear it now, cracking the surface of his hangover: _It’s Christmas, Rob! Good will to all men and all that!_ But his head feels like it’s closing in on him, like someone’s got it packed into their fist and won’t let up. He doesn’t get sick from booze anymore, but it makes him wilt and fold in on himself – sensible rational thought leaking out of his ears.

Somehow, in the night, he’d managed to convince himself that Aaron had seen nothing. What he’d stumbled on was two guys in a bathroom, nothing more intimate than two guys talking. He hadn’t worked out the finer details – had Aaron walked in before or after? After. Yes that had to be right. But through the night it came back to him in snatches, it muddled with dreams. In some of the night-blurred visions he relived the moment in the same thumping clarity he’d felt at the time. Wanting to chase Aaron, claim it had been a dare. People did things like that with enough booze in their gut, didn’t they? Perhaps he’d be naïve enough to believe that’s all it was. Robert spent days lying through his teeth, he wasn’t going to let some teenage thug intimidate him into telling the truth.

In other different alcohol blurred moments, he dreamed Aaron had walked in on him and this guy – this Tim or Dean or whatever he’d been called – fucking against the bath tub. Robert dreamt he’d looked up at Aaron in the doorway and smiled. He dreamt Aaron stayed watching for a minute too long. He dreamt he caught Aaron’s gaze in a mirror above the tub, a steamed up version of him watching, just watching as Robert fucked this silent stranger.

And then the dream that had kept him awake since five, the one that had prised his eyes open, that had made him sweat and run his hand across his face, staring at the blank of the ceiling for an unimaginable amount of time. He’d dreamt of Aaron in that BnB bathroom, his hand in the back of Robert’s hair, a low pressure on his head. Of licking his parted lips and touching them against the head of Aaron’s cock, flicking his gaze upwards and seeing the lower half of Aaron’s face tremble. He took Aaron into his mouth and felt him stagger backwards. He heard him moan, in a way too real to be invented. And then in the confused way dreams operate, he’d broken his mouth away, stroking the damp skin of Aaron’s inner thigh and told him what excuses he’d planned for reality: _It was just a stupid dare, Aaron. We were drunk. He dared me_. And then, in the same dream, Aaron pressed on the top of his head, eyes a blue so beautiful they were still imprinted when he woke and Aaron had said: _I dare you too_.

*

He’s ready for it, the reinforced smiles and forced jollity, but he stands behind the door to the backroom and breathes in ready to face his awaiting little sister. Her enthusiasm doesn’t disappoint and she races over to him, complete with her Christmas pudding glittery jumper and throws her arms around him.

“Happy Christmas!” she cries, dragging him into the room, where she has all the presents laid out in neat piles for them all.

In some ways he’s grateful for this disruption of a normal day. Christmas means they can stay cooped up in the pub’s backroom and not have to face the outside world. It means visitors aren’t likely. It means he probably won’t have to see Aaron and struggle to explain last night. He hopes Aaron feels too awkward and embarrassed to say anything at all about it, whether he’ll accept the idea of it being a drunken prank just so that they can both move on from it.

More importantly, he’s glad that Christmas has arrived to keep Aaron away from Victoria and any noble ideas he might have to tell her what he’d seen. Robert had to put a stop to that. There was nothing more to last night’s blow-job than a release. Well, that had been the intention. He’d only been looking for someone to satisfy the craving. It’s all he wanted when he’d had a few to drink, an orgasm from someone. It didn’t matter who – woman or man. Only last night he’d wanted a bloke. It was a risk – on his sister’s doorstep in a BnB of locals, but he’d needed it. The guy was dark haired and flirty, too loud and too handsy, but the kissing had been enough to make Robert want to be sucked off by him. He had hoped they’d take it in turns, but the bloke had found being caught so funny that Robert had gone off the idea and told him to finish himself off and go home. Robert found the only way he could blot out the sickness he felt about being caught was by removing a hidden bottle of scotch from Eric’s bar and surreptitiously drinking it until he could no longer feel his face. Aaron had left the party – that much was obvious – but Robert kept seeing him in every dark blur of clothing.

After the party, Robert staggered back to the pub and saw a light on at Smithy Cottage. Victoria had insisted on staying to tidy up and he had just stood there on Main Street, staring up at the square haze of yellow wondering how he could convince Aaron that he’d seen nothing (threats he wouldn’t keep, money he didn’t have), until finally the light went out and Robert retreated.

He’s still in the blur of last night’s thoughts when Diane enters the room and her jangly reindeer earrings catch him on the cheek when she moves to kiss him. She laughs. They were a present, she says, a silly cracker gift from Jack years ago. There’s a knot in his chest which tightens, hurts, and like everything else he pushes down down down until he can convince himself he doesn’t feel it at all and is just a hum of the world around him.

“It’s so good to have you home for Christmas, Robert,” she says, rubbing at his arms and giving him that motherly head tilt. “Heavy night last night, I hear?”

“What have you heard?” he says, face stiffening. Whose been talking? Whose Aaron been blabbing to already? How many villagers have the Dingles infected with their gossip? But then he get a hold of himself and sees her disapproval melt into a smile and his chest slumps, relaxing, as Diane beckons him over for breakfast. He hasn’t dared look at himself in the mirror, but he can imagine the sight. Drooped hair, dark circles, red eyes. Shame, regret, guilt.

Breakfast passes slowly and is clogged with Vic’s chirpy commentary about last night’s party. Robert offers little in agreement, just the odd generalised remark that could have been about any party anywhere. In truth he doesn’t remember anything about the party specifics. He couldn’t name a person he introduced himself to, a song he heard or a tray of food. He remembers Aaron. He remembers the sound of his feet down the corridor running away. He remembers wanting to throw up and hoping if this stranger – this bloke – would just shut up then they could fuck and Robert could get rid of the feelings that plagued him. But over breakfast his weak smiles fade as toast turns papery in his mouth. Then it’s onto the presents and he barely registers what he opens or what he hands over to Diane and Victoria, but there’s a brief moment of reprieve from his thoughts as Andy shows up with gifts for the women and stands awkwardly by the couch trying to be civil towards Robert.

“Can I get you a drink?” Robert asks, his form of present, peace offering. Christmas makes moments like this harder, reminding him that they’re meant to be brothers, they’re meant to be together on a day like this celebrating as a family.

“No,” Andy says. “I’m not staying long, I’ve gotta go and give Sarah her presents.”

Robert nods, looking at the stuffed gift bags Andy has by his side. Sarah was only a few months old when he left and Robert still can’t really picture Andy as a father. When he thinks of the word father, he thinks of his own. Jack. A man of few words and even less patience. He wonders if Andy’s the same, or if he’s like Jack was with Victoria, doting and softer. Robert doesn’t know if he should’ve bought a present for his niece but he hasn’t, he almost forgot she existed. Besides, what do you buy a five-year-old anyway?

He’ll chalk it up to another failure if anyone asks. In his head anyway, he won’t admit that to them. He’ll say her present was delayed in the post, that he bought her this year’s most sought after toy and they’d run out of stock. Stupid stores and their lack of understanding when it came to supply and demand. He’d ring them first thing on the 27th and give them a piece of his mind. That’s what he’d tell them, that’s the story he’d invented.

But no one did ask. Him and Andy were practically strangers now. No one expected any different, except Victoria and her doe eyed hopeful looks, too used to be disappointed by the division of her family.

*

They have an early dinner (crackers, turkey, paper hats, pudding) and Diane opens the pub, as promised, at the later-than-usual time of two. Robert makes excuses to stay in the back room. He tells Diane he wants to help her set up the new BluRay player he bought her and she says _Oh it’s fine, Robert, do it another time._ And then he says he’ll stay behind and do the washing up and she says _No, leave it. We’ll tackle it later_. And then he complains of being tired and bloated and still hungover from the night before but she won’t take no for an answer so before long, he’s sat in the pub – in a corner booth, hidden away from the door – wishing he was anywhere else. She brought him over an orange juice, fizzing with a dissolving Disprin. _For your head_ , she said with a pitying wink. _I wouldn’t even be this sympathetic to my own children_ , she said, _but I can’t put up with your sulking face any longer_.  

The Dingles are in first, to no one’s surprise, and Robert feels the backwards lurch of his stomach as Chas Dingle enters, her laugh setting his teeth on edge. He can’t help but look as the pack wanders past, arms slung over each other and Zak staggering with gait of booze. After a moment, as the swarm huddles and disperses he relaxes; Aaron isn’t with them. Chas has tinsel around her neck like a feather boa and plonks herself beside Marlon (who doesn’t look thrilled by her drunken guffawing) and the young girl, who Robert can only assume is Belle, just rolls her eyes and confidentially orders a lemonade from the bar. She asked for a shandy first until Diane shot her down with a single glance.

Robert’s lost Victoria to one of the Barton girls, so he glances over yesterday’s paper able to read full sentences now that he knows Aaron isn’t in the room. It slots into place when he thinks about it – he’d be spending the day with Paddy, not the mother who’d abandoned him. But just as he’d pictured the strange pair of them, cremating a Christmas dinner and fighting over the wishbone, the door of The Woolpack swings open and in walks Aaron, coat zipped up to his throat and rubbing his hands together rather than opening the door for Paddy, who comes in behind him.

Robert hasn’t planned for this, only feared it, avoided it. He wasn’t thinking any further ahead than today, only knew that if he could keep away from Aaron then he could hope for it all to just disappear into the fog of Christmas. It’s a small village, there is gossip and scandal every week, something new for him to talk about. But a voice in his head reminds him: _they still talk about you as the boy who stole his brother’s wife_. How can he escape this?

Keeping as far away from the door’s eye-line as possible hasn’t worked and Aaron’s gaze meets his almost as soon as he sets foot in the pub. Robert looks away slow enough to know Aaron tears his face away faster and presses himself against the bar – keeping his back to Robert – and orders a pint. Then he joins his family, shaking off his coat and revealing a slim fitting Ben Sherman shirt in a garish check, which raises whistles from the table and ruffles him with embarrassment, telling them to shut up. He doesn’t look in Robert’s direction again and somehow that’s almost worse. He can’t read what Aaron’s thinking.

*

He gets up to go to the men’s and as he does, Diane stops him to ask about his plans for Boxing Day and beyond – “You still haven’t told us when this infamous girlfriend of yours is coming to visit!” – but Diane stopping him like this traps him - and Aaron’s nearby, hovering for another drink. Robert feels as if the secret is burning off him, steaming the air around him and there’s nothing else he can think of but running. But then Diane leaves and he’s close enough to Aaron now that he has to speak, he has to find some way of shutting him up.

“I need a word,” he says to Aaron. He doesn’t ask if he can speak to him or bother about politeness. He doesn’t have the room in his head for that.

Aaron’s expression is plain, unreadable. There isn’t anything in his eyes that Robert expected. No mocking or judgement. He just shrugs. “Yeah?”

“Not here,” Robert says, feeling the words come out harsher as he grits his teeth. “In private.”

“And you’re not worried that might look a bit weird?” Aaron says. He has all the attitude and ego of someone Robert wants to punch. He expects the feeling is mutual, only Aaron doesn’t have the charm he has. Most people will forgive him. But Aaron? He has a brooding, gruff quality to him. Dark and wintery.  

Robert grabs at his elbow and pulls him along through the doors, to the toilets. Aaron shrugs him off, only for Robert to grab the front of Aaron’s shirt and push him against the wall. They’re alone in there but Robert can’t bear to raise his voice. His knuckles press into Aaron’s chest, his head filled with the teenage aftershave Aaron wears and the mint of his gum.

“What you saw last night, it never happened. You understand me?”

Aaron shakes his head, his breath exhaling in a laugh. He smirks, looking down at Robert’s grip on him. “You worried I’m gonna tell someone?” he says.

“You’re not going to tell anyone,” Robert says, scoffing. He can hear his own breaths, ragged with adrenaline.

“You’re sure about that, are you?”

“Yeah,” Robert says, pushing into him a little harder. He knows Aaron isn’t really trying, that his body is slack on purpose. He’s letting Robert lull himself into believing he’s winning; he’s laughing at him. Robert hears himself stammer. “It was a prank,” he says. “A stupid dare.”

“Okay,” Aaron says. Smirks. “A dare.”

“I’m serious.”

Aaron raises his hands, his mouth pulls down as if in its own kind of shrug. “Whatever you say.”

“It’s lads, isn’t it?” Robert says, loosening his grip on Aaron’s shirt, twisting up in his own lies. “It’s what _real_ blokes do. Daring to see how far they’ll go.”

“Good to know,” Aaron says dryly. “You must be a _real_ man, then. To go that far.”

Robert’s jaw hardens and he shoves Aaron against the wall again. This time together they’re fists and muscles and heat so close he can feel Aaron’s breath over his lips.

“Then what are you so afraid of?” Aaron says. It’s barely a whisper.

Robert watches Aaron swallow, his throat constrict. The dots of stubble on his jaw. For a moment he looks at Aaron’s mouth and his dream of last night comes back to him. He didn’t dream of Aaron’s mouth on him but for one blistering second it’s as if he did.

Aaron places the flat of his hands on Robert’s chest and shoves him backwards. He stumbles for balance and staggers upright, seeing anger flare in Aaron’s eyes. Electric blue.

“I don’t care,” – Aaron says, squaring up to him. His fists by his side – “what you do or who you are. I don’t care about you at all. I don’t want anything to do with you so just stay away from me, alright?”

Aaron gives him a final shove backwards until his spine hits a stall door. There are words on Robert’s tongue still, fizzing away, burning him from the inside. There are words for Aaron he could use, words that are buried deep. But as Aaron walks away, leaving him alone in the toilets all Robert can think of are the words Aaron left him with. Words he’s heard in his own head for years and years from people who might’ve never said them.

_I don’t care about you at all._


	5. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chat with Adam and Paddy makes Aaron question whether he should start dating and later he starts seeing Robert in a different way.

**Aaron**

 

It’s that heavy lull between Christmas and New Year and Adam has coerced him into going to the café to escape the confinement of family for a few hours. The Bartons do Christmas in a big way, apparently – it’s his dad’s favourite time of year. And meeting up with Adam wouldn’t be so bad on an ordinary day, had they not spent the previous night mixing drinks (literally any they could find into one glass) and downing them out of sheer boredom, but Aaron would rather be in a darkened room on the Xbox right now. Christmas telly had driven them to the brink; Paddy had started talking about a board-game night and Aaron felt as if his body was being dragged into a coma by the three selection boxes he’d eaten. The last thing he really wanted was to listen to Adam moaning on about his sisters.

Ordinarily he’d gravitate to the garage but Debbie had closed up for a few days, said they all needed a proper break. Or usually there was the pub, but that had lost its appeal since Christmas. No threats were going to keep him away from his local, but he didn’t want the aggro of some jumped up tosser like Robert Sugden breathing down his neck every time he went for a quiet drink. On principle he should make a stand and go there anyway but it wasn’t worth the hassle.

The last few days he didn’t even need to step foot in the pub, Robert had developed a habit of just showing up everywhere he was. The shop, the café, even walking past the bus stop. The village was too small. Robert had strolled past as Aaron waited for the bus into town, making a big show of ignoring him and steering Victoria away even though she was trying to get him to stop so that she could speak to Aaron. Even at a distance Robert’s unbearable.

In the café, Adam is gesticulating with a slice of toast, his eyes bulging with the re-enacted irritation he felt over some argument Holly had caused at home, when a blast of cold outside air skims the back of Aaron’s neck. The door to the café opens and Aaron knows without even looking too closely, that it’s Robert who walks in. There’s a certain way he carries himself, a height, a smell. He’s one of those people now that Aaron can just sense in the same air space. He’s not sure what the feeling is – a dread or anticipation. Whatever it is, it’s an uncomfortable one.

Robert’s alone today with a phone pressed to his ear. Aaron’s gaze follows him, watches his stiffly held spine as he queues for a drink. He doesn’t seem to be speaking to anyone on the phone; it could easily be a way to stop people approaching him for a chat. He has a hard stare, not looking up from the counter and he loosens his scarf by taking a bunch of it, around the throat, and pulling. Aaron can see all this, focused and then unfocused, behind Adam’s head and he nods in rhythm with the conversation.

Since Christmas Eve, Aaron can’t stop thinking about what he saw in the bathroom at the BnB. After he left the party he’d gone straight home and thrown himself on the bed, eyes prised open. Thoughts hovered over him like a layer of cloud, detached like they almost didn’t belong to him. It played out over the ceiling in shapes and sounds and sensations. Everything muddled, his skin lurched between prickles of heat and shivers of cold. He’d walked in on a secret. But it wasn’t just what he’d seen and who it had been, but how it had made him feel too. He didn’t have space in his head for anyone else’s hidden sexuality – he’d kept his own locked away for so long – and knowing it was someone on his doorstep made the intensity of knowing even stronger. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to know.

Robert wasn’t like him. He wasn’t meant to be like him either. He wasn’t meant to be with blokes in that way. He was supposed to be this womaniser, this serial cheat that had ruined Andy’s life and Katie’s too. He’d heard all the stories. And Aaron had only just begun to experience this new world of men and sex – even looking at porn was an uncomfortable mix of awkwardness and arousal. He still felt unsure about everything, guilty, dirty. And at the same time his fears rose, so did his intrigue, his appetite for it. He wanted to touch and be touched by someone. Kiss and be kissed. Now Robert had crowbarred his way into this discomfort so that now, the closest Aaron had come to experiencing sex between two men was witnessing Robert Sugden suck off a stranger. No porn had prepared him for seeing sex like that in reality, especially not when it involved someone who unnerved him, someone who was paranoid and who now kept one pace behind him. Someone who was infuriating and enigmatic, always in his space.

“Hello? Earth to Aaron!” Adam says, smacking him around the side of his face.

Aaron’s gaze judders and he looks away from Robert and back to Adam. The noise of Adam’s laugh makes Robert look over and then immediately turn away again. The secret between them has its own pulse, living and breathing between every moment they’re in the same room.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Aaron says, looking down at his tea and taking a drink before realising it went cool too long ago.

“I was talking about New Year’s Eve!” Adam says, tapping his fist on the table. “This is the first year we can go out properly, you know? And you never know, you might actually be able to pull, mate!”

Aaron laughs with him weakly, rolling his eyes and avoiding Adam’s hand that reaches out to smack him again.

“Yeah maybe.” He can’t even think of blokes, of pulling them, of letting their lips touch, without that visual of Christmas Eve creeping back into his head. Robert has made the whole thing real, physical rather than fantasy and Aaron can’t decide whether that makes his curiosity for sex greater or lesser. Everything surrounding what he’d seen at Christmas has a thrilling air of secrecy but that only seems to confuse him more – how much of the event was clouded with shame and how much of it was about illicit excitement?

“No ‘maybe’ about it. We are going out,” Adam says. “And I don’t care if we end up in some gay club, alright? You can’t stay on the shelf forever, lad!”

“Me? What about you? You’re hardly fighting them off!”

“Don’t you worry about me,” Adam says. “I won’t be single for much longer.” Adam is full of ego and bravado sticking out his chest and blowing Aaron a jovial kiss.

Their laughter catches Robert’s eye again as he waits for his coffee, and this time Adam notices. Aaron’s gaze snaps back quicker than before and he takes another drink of cold tea.

“No sign of the girlfriend then,” Adam says, leaning in and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level.

Aaron feels his face freeze up and he hides it behind his cup, skin flooding with heat. He doesn’t want to talk about Robert. He doesn’t want to look at him. Even think about him. There’s been no sighting or mention of his girlfriend since Robert arrived and Aaron wonders if she is some sort of cover, a story Robert tells himself to keep his reputation. He’s earned an eternal stamp of disapproval from the village for his string of betrayals and upsets and if this girl is real, then he hasn’t changed – he’s still a cheat.

With their drinks finished, Adam and Aaron decide to head off. Adam says he might even head to the farm and do some work just to avoid been cooped up at home. Aaron starts to walk in the opposite direction, wondering how he can sneak back to his room without Paddy trying to rope him into chores, when he hears his name being called.

He doesn’t stop, barely looking back over his shoulder for a courteous glance. The footsteps behind him quicken. Desperate. But Aaron doesn’t speed up meaning, Robert easily manages to catch up to him.

“Wait, will you?” Robert says, trying again. His gritted teeth make the words curl into hisses and he pulls Aaron back by the top of his arm.

He whips back around, fists clenched. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“Right,” Robert says, pressing in close so their voices don’t have any volume that will carry. He carries himself tall, hands in his pockets and his bitterness touching the air in circles of white breath. “And what was all that about in there? Looking over and laughing?”

Aaron scoffs. He’s been there – the paranoia, the sensation of your innermost thoughts emblazoned across your skin. The world seems to shrink, seems centred on you and your secrets. But Robert isn’t running from this, he’s pushing it, trying to pick a fight where there is none.

“We were joking around. You know, what mates do?”

“About me?”

“Yes, Robert. Because everything’s always about you.” Aaron takes a step closer, so Robert can really hear him. “I told you: I don’t care. About you, about whatever you do behind your girlfriend’s back. About any of it.”

Robert’s jaw hardens, a muscle flickering and tensing under his cheek. His gaze falls downcast and for a moment there’s something resembling guilt in his expression. It’s a rare sight, one Aaron can’t trust. Everyone has told him there’s not a genuine bone in Robert Sugden’s body and now with mask upon mask, he’s starting to believe them. Then the familiar look returns to Robert’s face, one of venom and scorn.

“I swear, if you ever-”

“You’ll what? You know, maybe I should do you a favour and tell someone. The lies can only last so long, can’t they?” It’s a test, a push. Aaron feels his heart like a fist hitting a wall. This road is all too familiar, confronting him with the closed off world of denial he hadn’t long been out of.

Robert riles the worst in him and as Robert steps forward, the sharpness in his eyes trying to scare Aaron to silence, Aaron laughs him off and walks away. The last thing Robert wants is a bruised ego but it’s the thing of his that Aaron wants to hurt the most. He can’t help but wonder what would be left of the guy if the ego wasn’t his anymore.

Of course he wouldn’t tell anyone, but he’s sick of Robert and his arrogance. Aaron holds the power and he leaves with it, intending to keep it that way. He’ll let Robert sweat, he deserves that.

*

When he gets back to Smithy, Paddy’s in the kitchen, his vet’s bag still on his shoulder. He’s only just walked in the door. He tries to stop Aaron going upstairs with small talk about an emergency rabbit rescue but he must sense Aaron’s fidgeting need for escape because he gets straight to the main issue. He’s been spying.

“What was that all about, out there?” he says, gesturing with a pointed finger.

Aaron’s on the stairs, looking up them and trying to shorten his answers to single words. He can never get away with that for too long with Paddy, but if he can keep as monosyllabic and calm as possible without sounding angry, he might just be able to get away without making him suspicious.

“Nothing.” He climbs them further, but relents, sinking back a few steps, when Paddy stops him again.

“Hold on.”

“What?” His eyes are rolling and his chest is still warm from the confrontation with Robert. The anger had his blood pumping. He doesn’t mean to snap at Paddy but that’s the way it comes out.

“You know you shouldn’t get involved with the likes of him,” Paddy says. “He’s bad news.”

“I’m not _involved_. He’s a dickhead. I’m trying to stay away.”

“Good,” Paddy says, but stammers to correct himself, to clarify the situation. “Well, what did he want then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he giving you a hard time?” Paddy says and then whispers when he sees the brow lowered look of confusion on Aaron’s face. “About you being…gay?”

“No!”

Paddy seems to back down after this, knowing when the awkwardness will be too much for the both of them. He’s been great since Aaron told him, too great at times – wanting to give Aaron leaflets and mentioning his gay cousin and commenting about out celebrities on TV and things he’s read in the news. Aaron doesn’t let onto him, but he knows it’s Paddy’s way of showing him love and for that he’s grateful.

“Oh!” Paddy says after a moment, edging back so there’s space for Aaron to come back downstairs. “Mrs Khalid, with the rabbits – she gave me some posh biscuits to say thanks. I thought you might…”

“Alright,” Aaron says, sloping back down the stairs. There’s an eagerness with Paddy, a loneliness that Aaron can’t help but take pity on. And he figures, if they’re eating that might at least negate the need for any more conversation.

Paddy presents the biscuit tin with a dramatic reveal as Aaron stands leaning against one of the counters. He doesn’t want to shatter Paddy’s enthusiasm by telling him they’re only biscuits, so takes three at once.

“Have you given any thought about what you’re doing Friday night?” Paddy asks, filling up the kettle and making Aaron wish he hadn’t changed his mind and had legged it upstairs when he’d had the chance.

“Friday night?” With Christmas he’s barely been able to keep of what day it is.

“New Year’s Eve!”

“Oh not you as well. What’s everyone’s obsession with New Year’s Eve?”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’ve had Adam banging on about it all morning. He wants us to go out,” Aaron says, and hopes the rest is drowned out by shortbread crumbs. “On the pull.”

Paddy’s eyes widen for a moment, then settle. He puts his hands together. “You don’t sound very keen.”

“That’s cos I’m not.”

Paddy’s lips part and then close again with little spurts of breath as his next words have a number of false starts.

“Don’t you think it would be nice if you met someone? It doesn’t have to be a whirlwind romance – I’m not saying you have to marry the bloke – but a new face. Someone to talk to. Someone…in the same situation.” Paddy leaves the kettle once its boiled and watches Aaron, filling the silence in the way that only Paddy can, with the stammering rambles of his thought process.

Aaron shrugs, body hunched away. More than ever he’s thought about it. A part of him wants to go alone, that he might be more daring and independent that way instead of falling on the crutches of his well-meaning support network. He’s thought about it, the way an evening might go. He hasn’t spent time thinking of the logistics – how to go from talking to anything else. He has no lines or technique, he just imagines it in his head. Beer, a dark bar, eyes and smiles, a hand accidentally touching his. How a kiss with a man might feel, whether he’ll know instinctively what to do. Whether that lurch in his stomach will be the same as the one he felt when he saw Robert Sugden on his knees.

“You’ve come such a long way this year,” Paddy says, his eyes fond with pride. “And the one thing we all want is for you is to be happy. Your mum too. But you don’t want to miss out. Don’t cut yourself off from…experiences-”

“Alright!” Aaron says, resistant to the pauses in Paddy’s speech. “I don’t need ‘the chat’, Paddy.”

He nods. “Noted.”

As Aaron leaves the kitchen and walks upstairs, taking a few biscuits with him, he starts to think about what Paddy said about life outside the village. When Aaron had finally told him the truth, all those months ago, Paddy spoke about the future and falling in love but then it was intangible, too far away to even think of. Then his head was heavy with the consequences of coming out, of what that meant and how it jarred with his sense of identity. He’d started understanding himself, even if he couldn’t quite embrace it.

Once in his bedroom and gaze cast across the village his thoughts returned to Robert. Maybe he’d been too harsh on him. Just because he was older and carried himself with a pompous air of confidence, didn’t mean he was any surer of himself that Aaron was. As far as Aaron could tell, no one else knew about Robert’s interest in men and maybe – although Aaron was reluctant to commit to this thought – they were more alike that he’d thought. It wasn’t so long ago, Aaron was smacking people and trying to commit to Victoria, dealing with his anger issues and drinking more than he should, just to escape an identity and a world he didn’t want to be part of. Perhaps Robert was the same, manifesting in different ways.

Aaron throws himself back onto the bed, his body landing with a bounce. He thinks of the times he spent in this room alone, battling with himself and crying himself to sleep. Those nights were so familiar he could feel the tear-damp pillow underneath him. He was luckier than some – he had Vic, Paddy, Adam – even his mum had had her moments. But Robert? He was so dead set against anyone finding out, so tense with the paranoia of it all. And now Aaron had just made things so much worse by threatening to out him.

*

Bob’s behind the bar and tells Aaron to go straight out the back. He tells Bob he’s after Victoria and he says he’s not sure if she’s in, but to go on through anyway – Diane wouldn’t mind. Aaron hovers in the doorway of the backroom, edging on the right foot then the left. He can’t call out for Vic because it’s not her he’s after, but he inhales on hearing a heavier set of feet coming down the stairs. Aaron stands by the sofa, clearing his throat so he won’t startle Robert as he turns the corner from the hallway.

Aaron sees Robert’s feet and legs first – bare. The hair on his legs is brushed downwards and dark with water and then above his knees, secured low on his hips is a cream towel, tied to the side. Robert’s hands are still on the towel like he’s just tied it, and his chest shimmers with a glistening of water. Water droplets track the smooth contours of his body as he moves into the room and shakes his damp hair, stopping abruptly when he sees Aaron in front of him. Aaron hasn't seen a man half naked in the flesh like this before. 

“Sorry,” Aaron says, gaze flittering until it stills on Robert’s face. His cheeks are flushed. “Bob sent me through.”

“Are you stalking me now?” he says. There’s a sternness to his words that isn’t matched by his tone, it’s light, teasing in a way that makes Aaron look at the floor. Aaron isn’t sure what’s made Robert ease up, but maybe it’s the awkwardness of the situation and that he’s standing there in nothing but a towel.

“No, I er- I was looking for Vic,” Aaron says. His eyes fall on Diane’s photos on the mantelpiece. There’s a photo of a younger Robert, rounder cheeks and longer hair, not the slender physique he has now. He doesn’t stand the way the boy is on the photo. He has his hands on his hips, rivulets of water skimming the skin just above the towel line. Aaron shivers and watches Robert comb wet hair from his forehead with his fingers.

“She’s not here,” he says and brushes past Aaron to go to the kitchen. The freckles dotted across his shoulder blades move as he stretches to reach for a glass, which he fills with water. For a second Aaron’s gaze falls below the line of Robert’s towel and sees it tighten when he moves and then like reaching out towards a flame, Aaron snatches back his glance.

“I’ll catch up with her some other time,” Aaron says, realising he hasn’t replied to Robert in the time it’s taken for him to make himself a drink.

“Suit yourself,” Robert says, wiping his red mouth with the back of his hand.

Aaron leaves, closing the door to the backroom behind him and hurrying out of pub, past people he might know and others he’s never seen. The cold December air hits his face. Ice and fire. He walks home, each footstep printing the images of Robert deeper into his head. He’d never looked at him before, not properly, and now that he has he isn’t sure he can forget that lurch inside of his stomach any longer.

 

 


	6. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The surliness, the darkness. The hoodies and tracksuit bottoms. The way he made himself so sealed off and unavailable. Robert wanted to be the one who made him tick. He wanted the danger of being close to someone who knew more about him than they should. The risk, the thrill. On his very doorstep. Someone unexpected, someone he could impress. The chimes of New Year had made all of that rise to the surface and interfere with his thoughts."
> 
> aka it's the start of the New Year and things coming crashing to a head when Robert goes to see Aaron late night at the garage.

**Robert**

 

Aaron. The garage grease monkey. The Dingle that says he’s not a Dingle. He’s around again, in the pub. Always there. Robert isn’t sure if it’s paranoia that leads him to thinking that Aaron’s whispering about him, with his mate usually, but sometime even if Aaron’s standing alone in the garage, looking briefly over with a mug in his hand, Robert can feel whispering in the back of his head.

Aaron had said he didn’t care (Robert had that part compact and replayable in his memory) and said that he wouldn’t tell anyone. But then only a few days later he was getting up in his face, spikey glints in his eyes, saying he might just tell someone. That he might be doing Robert a favour. He actually laughed at him and walked away. Of course it made Robert sweat, it made him sit in the backroom of the pub and stare straight into the flat photographic eyes of his father and imagine the words of every family member swirling around his head. A tropic thunderstorm of accusations and horror. It made him think of village faces and gossip travelling through each house like smoke. It made him think of escape. Then came the realisation that he had nowhere else to go, no money, no prospects. A failing business, a betrayed girlfriend. He’d never let Camila find out about the cheating (if you could really call it that), but if she found out what a loser he was and how he’d run the business into nothing – she’d never forgive him.

He hasn’t always worn a second skin of paranoia when Aaron’s around. It’s only been lately he’s felt Aaron’s eyes on him and then flitting away as soon as Robert’s looked up. At first he seemed to stick to his word about not caring, about staying out of Robert’s way. It was all snarls and glowering avoidance. Robert’s presence was a repellent, a creeping bad smell. Aaron couldn’t get away from him fast enough. But now? A new year, the straight black digits of the 11 in the year on Diane’s calendar, and Aaron’s in his orbit, looking up and then away faster than Robert can track.

Robert can pin it down to an afternoon, Aaron in the backroom, his gaze dripping everywhere as Robert stood half naked in a towel. The vastness between them shrank. Aaron had given him a once over – and then again when he thought Robert hadn’t noticed. For all his hunched and brooding stature, the sniffed indifference of his attitude, he was still a young guy. With a pulse and hormones and eyes. Robert knew his body was good these days – toned, a freckled dusted tan, a competitive ridge of muscles along his abdomen. Aaron had looked. And then looked away, to make it very clear he had never looked in the first place. That’s when the axis had tilted, when Aaron’s hostility seemed to soften.

Robert’s noticed that Aaron has this habit of biting at his bottom lip, even between conversations with Adam, even as he drinks from his pint glass. He watches him in the pub – and sees him sometimes touching his lips and other times not. He rarely smiles. And his contributions to conversations don’t seem to run on longer than a sentence. And Robert knows all this because Aaron is in his orbit now, impossible to avoid.

He’s thought about ways of shutting him up. For good. Serious things that have shadowed over his thought process in dark and unforgiving waves. But then that feeling passes and Robert sees him, darts springing out of his hand or with a finger smear of oil on his cheek and wrench in hand and then he sees him for what he is – eighteen full of bravado and low self esteem. He won’t tell. And Robert keeps repeating this even when he doesn’t believe it. And sometimes when he sees Aaron grimacing in the face of an awkward customer or rolling his eyes behind Paddy’s back, Robert knows why he won’t do anything to shut Aaron up.

He catches himself smiling, laughing, at Aaron’s snarly attitude.

*

It’s only the second day of January but the festive season shrinks behind him, pushing him closer to a day he might have to tell the truth about whether he’s staying or going. Vic flutters around him still asking him questions about Spain and his life out there and he finds himself giving her money he doesn’t have just so he can get some space and air without having to fill the silence with more lies. She should go to the sales, he says. Treat herself. What else are rich big brothers to do if not treat their little sisters?

And when he has to, what does he tell her about Spain? That it’s hot and beautiful, that it’s so different from home. That the air has a weight to it, that conversation is fast but actions slow. That he’s been dragged along into the heart of it, Camila leading him through. She’s his confidence, his determination. That he likes the food and the wine and the long and lazy afternoons.

And what he doesn’t he tell her? That it overwhelms him. That he has projected to them the image of a man he isn’t, that Camila is in love with this masked, false version of himself. That he talks so little of home that she thought he was an only child, that she thought he was an orphan long before Jack died. That around her and her father, his words are smoothed and rounded, devoid of Yorkshire twang. That she doesn’t know how lonely he feels. That she doesn’t know he begged and borrowed money from Annie just to rent a bed for the night when he first moved back out there. That he has taught himself to stop crying and prevented emotions from piercing the surface – that Camila thinks he’s stoic and brave and he’s nothing like that. That he misses damp winters and overcast summers and the comforts of home. Things that he missed and hated missing all at once. That Spain is where he first discovered he was good at hiding himself, keeping secrets. Where for the first time he let himself find out for definite the answer that, yes, he liked sex with men too. That his whole word there is a fantasy, glass bricks of lies. That he doesn’t want to lose it but feels it shattering around his ears already.

He persuades Vic to go to the cinema (“Go on,” he says. “Go and see Deathly Hallows for the _third_ time. You’ve been banging on about it since I arrived.”), gives her extra cash for a taxi when she complains about the slow bus and sets up his laptop to Skype with Camila. When the webcam focuses on her, his heart stammers with a mixture of lust and guilt. He misses the familiarity of her touch, the way she looks beside him. The way they look as a couple. He forces a smile, tight over his teeth.

Camila reaches out towards the camera as if she can touch him and beams at the sight of him. She combs her blonde hair over her shoulder and sighs his name. “Oh Rob,” she says. “I miss you so much. When are you coming home?”

He laughs, taken aback that this is her first question. “Soon,” he says. “I told you. As soon as I’ve sorted the contacts here…”

“I know, I know,” she says, shaking her hands across the screen. She’s on the queen size bed in her apartment – the one he spends more time in than his own – kneeling in front of the screen and a thin dress falling across her legs. “Contacts! Contacts!”

“I forgot to say – Happy New Year.” He tips his head towards her as if they’re clinking champagne flutes. They did that last year, in bed, and he’d dared himself to dream of 2010 as the year that was made for him. A year after his father’s death he might just be successful enough to prove him wrong.

This year Camila had been invited to some whirlwind party of her father’s. Some grand estate he’d hired with endless champagne and more networking than Robert could stomach. She’d phoned Robert the night before New Year’s Eve but at the time she’d been distracted planning a launch of a new company project, answering pinging emails rather than his questions and told him she wouldn’t be able to call him at midnight as it would look rude in front of prospective clients. She told him she’d be thinking of him as midnight struck and he told her the same. She gave him a preview of the dress she was wearing and that took some of the edge off his resentment.

Camila repeats the sentiment back to him, wishing him a Happy New Year. “Was it some wild party in the fields at midnight?”

“You really have no idea what Emmerdale is like,” he says, grinning.

“Because you’ve never told me,” she says and he feels his smile drying up.

“It was nothing special,” he says, trying to push the topic out of her grasp again. “Just in the family pub.”

“How quaint,” she says, her eyes scrunching. He’s never shown her so much as a photo. He wonders if she’s ever searched for it online, searched for him even. There must be traces of his father online somewhere, a stray copy of his book or an archived newspaper cutting about the barn fire – his mother. But if Camila has googled him, she’s never said.

He thinks back to New Year’s Eve, the argument he had within himself about what to do. He hated New Year celebrations more than anything. It was a time of contemplation and regret and he didn’t have the strength for either. The previous year, his business was thriving and he and Camila didn’t get out of bed the whole evening – eating and drinking horizontally, fucking until the new year began. There was no room for regret, no space for thinking too much. It was just the way he needed it. But this year, the packed pub of his adolescence, too many familiar faces – it made him want to run, to find a nameless, forgettable somebody to spend the night with. To forget with.

He was sure Aaron had been in the pub at some point and Robert briefly considered trying to get a rise out of him for his own entertainment. Pick a fight, buy him a drink, belittle him in front of his friends, try and get him alone. But in the end, three pints down, Robert had lost sight of him and the evening’s attraction shrunk in an instant. The alcohol stopped blocking the thoughts he usually prevented. He fancied him. The surliness, the darkness. The hoodies and tracksuit bottoms. The way he made himself so sealed off and unavailable. Robert wanted to be the one who made him tick. He wanted the danger of being close to someone who knew more about him than they should. The risk, the thrill. On his very doorstep. Someone unexpected, someone he could impress. The chimes of New Year had made all of that rise to the surface and interfere with his thoughts.

On Skype, Robert talks to Camila vaguely about his time at home and asks her questions about her father’s party, edges around talking about money and what sorts of investments her father might consider making in the coming year. In the end Camila brings it up without him needing to.

“You know Papa couldn’t stop singing your praises at the party,” she says, but Robert doesn’t kid himself with pride, he can already hear her voice sliding, the disappointment coming.

“Oh yeah?”

“But you know he says he just doesn’t understand all the tech side of things. I’m sure he’ll be able to help find you someone who is interested eventually.”

“It’s a business,” Robert says. “Not a charity case. I don’t need him to take pity on me.” He can hear it in his voice, the bitterness, the resentment. He had listened to her talk of the party, of the connections she made, how the company she co-directs is looking at record breaking figures for the financial year. She doesn’t know Robert had to take out a new loan to pay his staff, that he can’t afford any of them. He’d been relying on her father’s money to repay the debt – under the guise of starting a franchise – but he was making it increasingly clear he wasn’t interested. And for all Camila’s tales he knew neither of them had any faith in him to make a success of his life – not really.

He barely hears Camila try to reassure him, he can only picture her and her father talking about him – the stupid English boy from the farm, haemorrhaging money. He tunes back into the conversation again to hear her begging him to come home.

“You’ve been with them all Christmas,” she says, drawing her lips into a pout. “I miss you. I want to see you sometime, too.”

“They’re my family,” he says, cutting off her attempts to try and tell him she was only teasing and that she understood. “I haven’t seen my sister since she was a kid.”

“I know –“

“I’m doing my best over here,” he says, pressing his fingertips at his temples and trying a different tact with her, one he’s trying to buy into. “I’m doing this all for us.”

*

He hears them, finishing their pints and sharing some in-joke about where they went on New Year’s Eve. Robert tilts his head and holds his own beer still in his hand to try and hear the full conversation, but it’s only fragments.

“…texted him?”

“No!”

“Well, why not?”

“Because it wasn’t anything special.”

“Oh really? He was that bad was he?”

“Well I’m not planning on marrying him.”

“Mate!”

Adam’s laughter drowns out any further conversation and Robert’s gaze flicks over to see them finishing their pints and Aaron wiping foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. He stands, laughter still imprinted in a smile on his face and he glances, absentmindedly over towards Robert and then away again. Robert wonders every time – like he does tonight – what Aaron sees when he looks at him, who he thinks Robert is deep down, whether he already has him sussed. The thought terrifies and excites him deep into his bones.

He gives it a minute and then picks up his jacket from the vacant bar stool next to him, and heads out of the pub, following the path Aaron and Adam took, ghosting behind them. He hears Adam roaring away on a quadbike, but there’s no sign of Aaron at Paddy’s cottage – not on the path and not in the doorway – but then he remembers a snatch of overheard conversation at the pub, a glimpse of Aaron twirling a set of garage keys. It was his turn to lock up tonight after a late-running customer had picked up their car. Robert pauses on Main Street, focused in on the cold, dark night and then, a blink of hesitation, he heads towards the garage.

Robert waits in the dark. Waits. Watches. Sees the customer get dropped off in a cab and pay up. Sees him leave. The whole exchange takes around twenty minutes and Robert is numb from the January cold. He should have left, he knows he should have walked away but he feels committed to staying now, to making his appearance seem as casual as possible. He’s stopped being able to feel his face and the warmth hurtling around his gut feels as if it belongs to someone else.

Aaron’s inside, storing the money in the cashbox and filling out an accounts form. He looks too studious to be stuck working for someone else his whole life. Robert remembers the feeling well. He clears his throat not wanting to startle Aaron and balls his frozen hands inside his jacket pockets. Aaron turns and rearranges his expression so it resembles a scowl before he turns his back again, seeming to ignore Robert and the way he’s already let himself inside the all too familiar garage.

“Service with a smile,” he says.

“What do you want?” His teenage grunts are wedged between the half-scoffed sighs of someone who can barely make the effort to raise his head. He blocks the doorway of the office, having stacked the paperwork in a pile. He wants Robert to get the message loud and clear by the looks of it: he’s leaving and so is Robert. Only Robert has different ideas.

He runs his fingers along the top of a car, half hidden by a cloth and the engine exposed. He thinks back to the days he spent here, the hours of his life defined by the comings and goings of this garage. It feels like a lifetime ago, but then the smells are the same, the oil and metal and rubber. The dirty coffee cups in the office, the folders spilling with papers. But this is new, this bloke in front of him, the overly baggy t-shirt. The attitude. This secret flaming between them.

“I just wanted to clear the air,” Robert says, stepping forward and blocking Aaron’s immediate exit.

“About what?” Aaron says, blinking. It’s back again the bristling denial of any connection between them. _I don’t care about you_.

Robert’s jaw seizes up and despite it being dark, with no one around, he hears his voice lower. “I wanted to make sure you were keeping up your promise.”

Aaron scoffs and leans towards him as if trying to make himself taller, more intimidating. “Don’t you think if I’d wanted to tell someone, the whole village would know about it by now?!” Aaron looks him up and down and it’s not the same as before, it’s not the appraisal of his body, not a flicker of attraction. “I think you know I’m not gonna tell anyone; I think you’re just making excuses.”

“Excuses?”

“Yeah.”

Robert feels every breath, laboured. The garage seems to have its own pulse through the silence. He watches a tremble in Aaron’s throat, shadowed by a dark, adolescent stubble and takes another step closer. “Maybe you’re right…maybe I am. But you…you know all about excuses too,” he says.

“What’s that meant to mean?”

“You think I haven’t noticed? That you’re always around. Looking over…”

Aaron swallows and Robert watches the dark red of his lips part and his eyes blacken. Robert can see the shadow of his body cast across Aaron’s chest, moving over his face until they’re both greyed out by each other’s bodies blocking the light from outside. His head is still filled with the fantasy of his dream, the pressing intensity of it and a new feeling, one triggered by the conversation overheard in the pub, the thought of Aaron and someone else, the ache between his ribs. That green feeling that makes him want to close the gap between them.

But then there’s a noise outside. A woman’s sharp laughter and the white-lit passing of a car and Robert stalls, takes a lurch backwards, shooting cold air between them and flooding Aaron’s figure with light again. Aaron takes this hesitation, this blast of fear, as a sign and steps to the side, pushing his way past Robert and towards the door.

“Forget it,” Aaron says, his words eaten up by regret and mistake.

The car has driven on, the laughter has passed. Robert propels himself forward and pulls on Aaron’s arm, twisting him around. There’s no “Wait!” or “Hold on!” or conversations that should be had. He knows his hands are like ice. Ice on Aaron’s arm and then ice on Aaron’s face. His fingers must freeze him to the bone. He pulls Aaron towards him, light on his feet and they stumble, trip and collide until cold is no longer a sensation he knows. Aaron’s mouth is as soft as he imagined. The still shock of the kiss melts away and then Aaron’s kissing him back with an undisclosed passion – one Robert could never invent in fantasy, one too good for imagination. He’s warm and uninhibited and clawing against Robert’s jacket, stealing breaths when their lips dare to part. Robert yields to the inevitability of it all. The thrill of finally having him dissolves the world. He hears the moan come from his own throat and then the briefest of breathy grunts escape Aaron’s lips, before he pushes back harder, battling Robert for control of the kiss and guiding his hands to the unzipped edges of Robert’s jacket.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long. Thank you to those reading for having patience with me. All your lovely comments and kudos keep me going! :)


	7. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron's kissed a man before...but this, this is a kiss.
> 
> _
> 
> Aaron and Robert's kiss takes their relationship to a new level.

**Aaron**

He’s kissed a man before. Once. Sometime after midnight yesterday. _Start 2011 as you mean to go on, lad_ , Adam had said. He remembers the kiss, the mechanics of it, all the fragments of thought that strung along with it. As he was kissing this fair-haired t-shirted lad, the scruff on his chin scratching at Aaron’s face and his hands heavy on Aaron’s shoulders, Aaron was thinking about how long this was lasting, whether he should pull away and change position, whether it was all that different to kissing a girl. Whether the guy was any good or if the booze and the swaying New Year spirit had made it all a bit wet and clumsy. Fumbled. He hoped Adam wouldn’t come back from the toilets too quick and witness it. And then the lad had broken away from him, squeezed his arm and suggested they played a game of pool. It was all over. Aaron wasn’t even sure what the bloke’s name was. They didn’t swap numbers and when he and Adam took a cab home, the overriding feeling – to be going home numberless but with a ‘first kiss with a bloke’ milestone under his belt – was relief. Not a fizzing excitement, not intrigue, not even disappointment. It hadn’t felt like a milestone really, except to say he’d done it. Adam was drunkenly proud. It seemed meaningless, not like a first kiss at all.

This. This is a kiss. There’s a weightless floating to his body, a low, humming pull at the centre of his stomach that drags through every nerve he’s got. Robert’s lips are soft, working him open, catching his in the short spaces between breathlessness. Aaron’s spine is crushed against the car but it’s the silk of Robert’s tongue that’s sending him crazy. To think he could have denied himself this feeling his whole life? One of Robert’s hands, the one that had cupped Aaron’s cheek, slides across Aaron’s chest and folds against his waist, pulling their bodies closer. Aaron doesn’t know if it’s possible to get any closer. He feels the solid figure of Robert’s body pressed against him, the velvet spice of aftershave eating into his senses. His stomach gives another flip and hears a throaty moan slip from Robert’s mouth, pushing his parted lips against Aaron’s once more.

Aaron takes two shaky handfuls of Robert’s jacket and pushes it down over the nubs of his shoulders and then gives in, gives up on any more concerted effort and yields to the power of Robert’s kiss. He pours life into him. Electricity. Arousal knots into Aaron’s body like a dormant root growing up between his nerve endings and feels Robert’s thigh push between his legs and find the evidence, the secret they’ve kept between them. How much they’ve wanted each other. Heat spreads across Aaron’s face as his body betrays the aloof, closed-off manner he’s being showing Robert all this time.

Their mouths break apart and the rush of breath Aaron inhales disturbs the quiet of the garage. Robert says nothing, barely moving except to tilt his head and place firm open mouthed kisses along Aaron’s neck. Aaron’s eyelids shudder closed and he feels his knees slump. He slices his fingers through the back of Robert’s hair, thinking back to the night in the BnB bathroom and how he’d known from that very second that this is what he’d wanted all along. Things he’d never expected to feel, things better than he could have ever imagined. All the panic, the nerves and uncertainty is deafened by the sensation of Robert’s breath on his neck, the way his hands roam across his body. There’s nothing slow or gentle easing him into this – this isn’t rubber rings and safety harnesses. This is freefall, plunging into the deep end of the pool and not knowing how to swim.

Robert’s hands are warm now and one with its sweeping, careless fingertips, brushes against the outline of Aaron’s cock. His body jolts and Robert’s reacts to the quickened pulse in Aaron’s neck by easing away from him and returning to nudge Aaron’s lips apart again. He smiles, like this is the easiest thing in the world. Like this isn’t the most terrifying, thrilling moment of Aaron’s small life. This isn’t him, he isn’t used to this. Robert might be the expert at quick, secret rushes of adrenaline, but not Aaron. The closest he’s felt to this before was running from the cops. The victory of escape. Not a man like Robert turning him on.

The next time Robert touches him, it’s calculated, teamed with a smile that Aaron’s drawn to. It’s not a smile that would relax him, it’s one that makes the pit of his stomach skip. He feels drunk. Robert presses the flat of his hand against Aaron’s cock and leans into him, darkness closing in around them.

“I want you,” Robert says.

Aaron swallows, his throat feeling as if he has a bolt lodged there and he finds himself nodding in reply to Robert, a nervous giddy laugh on his lips and teeth chattering with the cold. He moves his hands to Robert’s shoulders again, to help him off with his jacket, stopping for a second when he feels the quick press of Robert’s mouth on his again. Aaron’s neck loosens and his head falls back as Robert makes his trajectory very clear, his kisses heading south.

The exhale comes deep from inside his chest, like he’s stored it up his whole life, and Robert’s mouth breaks away to ask if Aaron’s okay. He doesn’t feel okay, it’s a greater feeling than a casual slip of a word. But he answers him yes anyway, even if he’s lost all sense of the word.

The sheet covering the frame of the car slips against the friction of their bodies and Aaron slides his hand into the open window of the car, steadying himself against the frame. Robert’s fingers enter under the waistband of his trackie bottoms and Aaron’s breath hitches, ticklishly worming away from Robert’s mouth at his throat. He’s waiting, patient and calm on the surface and an orchestra of nerves underneath, for Robert to lower to his knees, but before that shift in position happens, Aaron hears another noise outside the garage. This time it’s footsteps and they’re getting closer.

Cain’s voice, calling out pulls them apart.

“Aaron?! Are you in there?”

“Shit!”

It all happens in an instant. Robert pulls his jacket back over his shoulders and pushes Aaron aside to hide at the back of the garage, behind the metal cabinets and spare tyres. Aaron hurries him, pushing him away and zips up his hoodie, pressing his hand to the heat of his face. He tries to stop Cain entering the garage and wedges himself in the doorway.

“What d’you want?” he says, trying to play it cool even though he’s burning up like Cain’s caught him playing in flames.

“That customer not been yet?” Cain says, making Aaron panic by the way he keeps looking over Aaron’s shoulder and to the back of the garage. Aaron’s stomach churns.

“Yeah. I was just finishing up the paperwork.”

“Well get a move on, will you?”

“I _am_ doing.”

“Looks like you’re fannying around in there,” Cain says and Aaron turns back to look at the same area of the garage his uncle’s been staring at. An untidy office, a tarpaulin in a heap on the floor (it had been on the chassis of the car – the car they’d been up against). Cain pushes past Aaron and into the office. Aaron’s pulse accelerates and he catches a glimpse of Robert crouching, trying to make an undiscovered escape from the garage. Thinking quickly, Aaron barges into a toolbox in the office and it crashes to the ground, spraying wrenches and spanners across the office floor and giving enough noise and distraction, that Robert is able to make his escape undetected. Aaron doesn’t breathe in the moment it takes for him to leave, letting Cain’s insults wash over him and bending to pick up all the tools, all too aware that Robert has slipped away from him.

*

He doesn’t sleep that night. He pulls the duvet up over his head, hearing and feeling his hot damp breath in the dark. He masturbates and then balls himself onto his side, frustrated by how the night resolved.

There was no sign of Robert when he closed up the garage, for real this time. Cain had hung around too long and had probably scared him off. It was late, and Aaron didn’t feel like he could chase Robert around the village. He couldn’t be that person. What if Robert had had a change of heart? After all, what was Aaron to him? Some kid. Just some sheepish, eighteen year old virgin. A friend of his kid sister’s. Hardly a catch. Robert didn’t seem the sort of guy to chase either. He didn’t need to. So they’d reached a stalemate, a dry and unsatisfying one. Aaron sloped home, back to Paddy’s. He didn’t even have Robert’s phone number. He stood at his window for a while, staring out. He wondered what Robert was doing. Maybe Aaron had deluded himself. Maybe Robert wasn’t even at home in the pub, maybe he’d just been horny and had headed out, unable to get what he wanted from Aaron, he’d found it from someone else.

*

He hears Paddy’s voice, prising its way through his dreams - “Aaron?!” – and ignores it, pressing the pillow over his head. He feels like he has a hangover. A regret hangover, his whole body throbbing with the frustration of what if, what if, what if. He doesn’t dare let himself think about what might have happened, not really, not in any great detail. He thought about it last night, for one brief and white-hot tantalising second when he came into his own hand. He thought of Robert’s mouth, Robert’s hand, Robert undressing. His lean naked body. He’d never thought about the possibility, about the promise of another man’s body as much as he did in that one long night.

Paddy doesn’t knock and that’s surprising in itself. He rattles right in. “Aaron! It’s ten-thirty! Well, actually, _actually_ , it’s nearer to eleven, but that’s beside the point! I thought you were helping me out in the surgery today?”

Aaron groans, rolling over so he doesn’t have to face Paddy. He hasn’t even got the energy to shout at Paddy for barging in like he usually would. He wants to avoid the world for another day, hope he doesn’t come face to face with Robert Sugden and pretend that last night was meaningless.

“What is wrong with you?” Paddy says, poking his way into the room. “Is it teenage boy syndrome all over again? I thought you were past that hormonal stage?”

“Will you get lost, Paddy? I’m not feeling great.”

“No,” he says, standing at the foot of the bed. “You don’t smell it either. Open a few windows, let some light in.” At this he stands at the windows and yanks back the curtains, streaming brilliant winter sunshine into the room.

“Paddy!”

He sighs with big theatrical arm movements and paces back towards the door. “Fine! You spend the day in your pit, but I expect you downstairs in the vet’s tomorrow. Without fail.”

The door shuts behind him and once Aaron’s heard him tred down the stairs and out the door, Aaron climbs out of bed, uncreasing his boxer shorts and heads to the window and opens it like Paddy suggested. When he’s there, standing half naked and stretching to unlatch the lock, he’s almost forgotten about last night. About the heavy pulse of need he felt. And then once the window’s open and cool wintery air rushes through, raising the hairs on his arms and hardening his nipples, he looks out of the glass and onto Main Street and sees Robert standing there, a coffee in one hand and his head turned towards Smithy. Aaron’s breath is short and stuttered behind his teeth and he feels the ghost of Robert’s mouth gliding across his neck.

In a matter of seconds, Robert looks away and disappears out of view.

*

Lunchtime. Just. He’s showered, dressed. Paddy pops in again and greets him sarcastically. Says he’s going to be gone for a few hours – a call out, some new and very desperate sounding farmer the other side of the county – and if Aaron could please try not to burn the house down in the meantime.

After Paddy’s left, the door knocks some five minutes later and Aaron thinks it’s just Paddy again (he’ll have forgotten his kit bag, he always does) and Aaron calls out: “Doors unlocked!” because he can’t be bothered to answer the front door when he’s in the middle of making a sandwich. The radio’s on – they’ve just stopped playing the Christmas hits and have started playing real music again – and he’s tempted to sing along, if only to take his mind off everything, but Paddy caught him doing it once and mocked him mercilessly. So he doesn’t, he keeps focused on making his sandwich, not realising that the footsteps, the body coming in through the front door isn’t Paddy at all, until the man is right behind him in the kitchen.

“Are you alone?”

Aaron jumps, the butter knife clattering onto the kitchen counter. He spins around, mouth drying as he looks Robert in the eye. He’s wearing a blazer, his hair ruffled from the wind outside. He looks breathless, though he won’t have run.

“Paddy’s out on a…”

“I know. He’ll be hours trying to find the farm…” he almost doesn’t pause for breath, for Aaron to acknowledge what he means. “Yeah. That was me.”

And then, the air between them moves, the kitchen melts away and Robert is on him again, hands and mouth and pulling the t-shirt upwards and off his body in one smooth movement. Aaron lets him, presses his topless frame against the stiff fabric of Robert’s blazer and shirt and as Robert’s kiss feels harder and deeper and more sure than anything last night, he doesn’t think _what if, what if, what if_. All he can think of is: what next? What now?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, the next chapter carries straight on from where this one ends!


	8. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Robert's plan to keep Paddy away from the cottage, he has Aaron alone and all to himself. This time they can finally give into their feelings without interruption.

**Robert**

How did he get here? On the stairs, the dark, pokey stairs, with Aaron’s light tread, two steps behind. He can hear them breathing, soft and shallow – Aaron’s slightly quicker. Once, half a lifetime ago, he climbed the same stairs with Nicola. His first time. Now, Robert takes a look back at Aaron and watches a flicker of nerves crease his skin. Robert stripped Aaron of his t-shirt in the kitchen and now Aaron’s got it balled against his chest as if for modesty. Even in the half-light Robert can see the pale hairs on his chest have risen, a pulse in his throat, the dark press of his nipples through the thin material. Robert smiles at him and gives him the briefest of nods before they reach the top of the stairs. He’s almost afraid to speak and break the spell after their interruption last night, but today he’s made sure there can be none of that.

It was all too easy really, putting on a thicker accent, deepening his voice and giving Paddy a long list of symptoms for his cattle which Robert had spent a good ten minutes googling. Then there were the confusing directions to the farm, a postcode which would only lead him to crop fields. The whole thing was a masterplan. He hadn’t factored Aaron’s temperament into the equation and he knew by now he didn’t need to. Last night was foreplay, and if it wasn’t for Cain, Aaron would’ve given him everything right there in the garage. Robert had no intentions of wasting that opportunity and he’d gone to bed that night frustrated but knowing exactly what his next move was.

Aaron’s teenage bedroom makes Robert smile as he crosses the threshold – the posters, the dirty laundry and stained mugs on the floor and on the side. But as soon as Aaron joins him, all the periphery details dissolve and Robert corners him, backing him up against the wall. He takes hold of the t-shirt that Aaron holds like a security blanket and tosses it onto the floor and slides his hands from waist to slim hips. They stand together, breathing in short and quick bursts, a slight sway between them. Robert leans in, nipping his mouth at Aaron and slants back, admiring Aaron’s concentrated study of his mouth. So much of Robert’s desire for Aaron is caught up in the visible way Aaron shows his lust, even when he doesn’t want to.

“Where were we?” Robert says, breathing hotly into the pink of Aaron’s ear and moving his hand between them, until it sits just stroking at the shy swelling of Aaron’s cock.

Aaron swallows again, his pupils overpowering the blue of his irises. It doesn’t take a genius to work out – from Aaron’s clammy hands, from the sheepish way he looked at the bed, from the sounds he made which seem to startle even himself – that he’s never done this before.

Robert strokes him a few more times, until Aaron’s eyes roll lazily back and he relaxes into it, presumes this is the sum of all their longing – a quick hand-job against the wall – and then Robert takes a step back, moving backwards towards the bed, kicking off socks and shoes and removing his jacket. Watching Aaron the entire time. Before unbuttoning the first three fastenings on his shirt, Robert removes the condoms and lube from inside his blazer pocket and places them on the bedside cabinet.

“Look,” Aaron says, as Robert approaches him again and kisses him softly, a tinge of reassurance underneath. Aaron lays his hand on Robert’s chest. “I’ve never…not with…”

Robert looks at Aaron’s hand and waits for him to be brave, waits for him to move it. “No pressure,” he says to Aaron. “Your choice…your speed...whatever you want.”

That’s enough for Aaron and Robert’s convinced that Aaron’ll feel the delight, the relief smoking from him, because finally Aaron’s hands move and after one controlled tremble, unbutton Robert’s shirt. When they both have their shirts off, Aaron seems to ease into the moment more. They’re on equal ground now, both kissing back, both touching each other’s skin – even if only Robert has the confidence to touch him where he most wants to be touched.

“Stop me if…” Robert says, between a long, unwind kiss at Aaron’s neck.

“No,” Aaron says and with a brief shoot of bravery touches the fastening of Robert’s jeans. “I mean…keep going.”

For a lad of eighteen, he’s got a good body. Better than Robert had at that age as far as he can remember. You wouldn’t think it with all the beer and thick-cut sandwiches, but Robert can even make out lines of muscle on Aaron’s stomach. He wants to run his tongue against them, lick the smoothness from them. There’s time for that. Later.

They kiss their way to the bed. It smells of him. Of gift-set deodorant and the musty smell of sleep. But Robert’s been thinking about this smell, this bed, this body for so long now that it only serves to make him harder. Aaron eases himself horizontal, having chucked his footwear under the bed, and elbows up the bed, eyes steady on Robert’s face. Robert raises up and over him, supported by his arms and pressing a butterfly string of kisses down the centre of his chest. He swirls his tongue out, one nipple and then the next and hears the sharp inhale of breath, the shuffle of bedsheets and then Aaron’s taken the next step out of his control and pulls down his joggers and underwear. Aaron keeps his eyes shut for a second, only opening them to shift awkwardly and let a laugh run into his shaky exhales.

He rubs his hand across his face, hardly able to return his gaze to Robert’s. “This is…”

Weird. Awkward. Terrifying. Robert can sense what’s going on in Aaron’s head. His own beats to a different drum. One that wants to know if this is going to scratch the itch, if Aaron’s body is going to cure him of his cravings.

Robert laughs warmly, taking Aaron’s cock in his hand and pumping it until Aaron’s biting at his own fingers to stop himself moaning out loud. Somehow it feels inevitable they’ve ended up here. If Aaron hadn’t discovered his secret, their paths would have crossed another way and whether it would have taken days or weeks or months, Robert knows he’d still have wanted to end up here – in this bed with this man.

Robert closes his eyes at the first taste of him. That first, blissful release, the air rushing out of his nose and the flat of his tongue just there, just bold enough on the underside of Aaron’s cock and to have him underneath squirming. Robert wishes, holding Aaron’s body at the sides, thumbs sweeping back and forth on skin, that Aaron would look back at him again so he could enjoy that intense, starry-eyed mess going on inside of him. He makes these low grunts like he’s trying to keep them caged, little rucks of breath as Robert sucks him off. At first, Aaron’s hands stay clamped by his side and then gradually, lost to his own needs, he touches the crown of Robert’s head and keeps the other hand balled and knuckles under his teeth. He’s transparent then; it’s what he’s been wanting from the start. His hips begin to buck and Robert is powerless to resist the thoughts that come to him, how good Aaron would feel inside him.   

Aaron looks down at him and it’s as if he’s thinking the same, wanting the same. And then his head rolls back, his body arches and the spasm ends with a cry he couldn’t have controlled even if he’d wanted to.

*

Robert’s laid out beside Aaron. It’s silent. There are inches between them on the bed, although he can still taste Aaron in his mouth. This is the moment where we’d both smoke, Robert thinks. Only he doesn’t smoke and Aaron is staring, numb and pink and flushed, up at the ceiling instead. The room sounds hollow, their deep breaths merging with the everyday sounds outside. Noise carries in the crisp cold of the day – traffic, voices, a rumble of a farm vehicle. He hasn’t thought about farming for a long time – the physicality, the smell of the earth, the feeling of isolation.

He doesn’t want to think about it anymore, that feeling of home not fitting, belonging. He props himself up and leans across Aaron’s body, leaving a route of light kisses along his stubbled jaw until Aaron’s head turns and meets his mouth with his own. Robert feels a band of tension through Aaron’s body, like a cord pulled tight and when Aaron’s hand rests on his shoulder- although it’s delicate and not pushing him away – Robert draws back.

“If you don’t want to do this…” he says and leaves it loose and abandoned in the air between them. It’s a half truth. The idea that he could really walk away from this, from him, when they’re so close. Robert’s body rages with need. He can’t imagine redressing and walking out. It feels like he’s wanted this a lifetime, even if it’s only days. That’s how temptation gets you, around the throat, inside your head, inescapable. Aaron feels it too, Robert knows it. It’s in his eyes, those gentle, nervy sighs. But Robert’s been with enough people to know when they need the right encouragement to take the risk. That they need time and patience and understanding even if Robert’s selfish desires struggle against it. And once he was like Aaron – he had been new to this, new to men – and needed to hear that he could leave if he wanted, could back off. He needed the option so that in that instant he knew he didn’t want to, couldn’t run away. And like Robert had done then, his first time, Aaron looks at him with a serious and steady gaze and swallows.

“I do. I do want to,” he says and Robert can hear the words unsaid: _So much._

The bed gives a strained groan as their bodies shift and Robert climbs on top of Aaron. His waist is slight under Robert’s hands and with his delicate touch Aaron squirms, blushing with an explanation of his ticklishness. Robert grins, leaning in to nuzzle at his throat with his lips.

“No more tickling,” he says. “Got it.” He uses Aaron’s ease of mood and distracted anticipation to lean across to the beside drawers and takes a condom and the bottle of lube.

Aaron’s smile melts into something more guarded, holding his breath and he nods. They’re done with talking about this, making excuses for this connection that’s swarmed between them. Robert’s done with being good; he was always going to do this. He was always going to fuck up. He might as well enjoy himself in the descent.

*

He’s slow with him. Lingering. Breaks from a kiss to watch him ride through that twisting pulse of pain and pleasure. Lets his fingers become claws on his spine. Sees him bare for the first time. Watches his eyes go blue and black like dying stars. Buries his mouth against his neck and makes the skin wet with breath and teeth and tongue. Feels his body convulse, hips buck and senses flame. Pulls Aaron’s arms above his head and says his name over and over like a prayer. Sees a ripple of held breath break across his chest and arms lash out. Hears his own name sworn and blunted with moans. Feels Aaron reach for him, brow crumpled and eyes closed, kissing any skin that comes close.

When he’s almost there, when ahead is a swimming vision of heat and lust and Aaron is a hazy dream of fantasy underneath him, he feels Aaron’s fingers pressing into his side and in a brief lapse of his first-time uncertainty, Aaron is pulling him closer, hands encouraging everything he can’t vocalise. He comes, touching Aaron as he does, pulling them both over the edge until the room is nothing but heavy, thumping breaths and damp bodies unwinding.

“Go on,” Robert says playfully, a moment after their breathing has reached a calmed level and he drinks in a long and hungry sight of Aaron’s spent and naked body. “Marks out of ten”

Aaron scoffs, sweeping the bedcovers over himself. He shrugs. “Seven.”

“Seven?!”

“You asked,” Aaron says and then gives him a smile that makes Robert’s insides spark. He knows the game he’s supposed to be playing. This indifference, this sparring.

“I’m never less than a ten,” Robert says, leaning on one arm to press into him and easing down so their mouths are inches apart. “I guess I’ll have to work harder next time.”

There’s going to be a next time; they both know it.

When he’s dressed and has managed to slip out of Smithy undetected, he switches his phone back on and receives an immediate bombardment of texts from Victoria, all littered with exclamation marks and capital letters telling him to come to the pub right now. Heat rushes to his face and a brief stab of nausea gets him in the gut. After a backward glance to the window of Aaron’s bedroom and a wave of guilt, he steels himself and rushes over to the pub. Excuses string together in his head, new ones forming until there’s one bright and clear rising to the surface of his panicked mind.

“There you are!” Vic says when she spots him coming through the pub doors. Her face isn’t the tear stained bloody mess he’d imagined. He looks around, head whipping back and forth for a sight of Diane, but she’s behind the bar like usual. Nothing’s out of place.

“What, what’s wrong?” Robert says, his clothes sticking to his neck.

“Nothing’s _wrong_ ,” Vic says, her eyes sparkling and she looks behind her, smiling.

Everything’s a blur. Slow motion. All the clichés. He doesn’t recognise her at first, or he does, but his brain is sluggish with the sequence of recognition. Her hair is up, her slender neck wrapped in thick layers of scarf - he’d told her how cold it was – and she opens up her arms as if to say _taa-dah!_ She’d been sitting at a table with Victoria wondering where he was.

“Aren’t you surprised to see me, darling!” Camilla says, stepping forward so tall and elegant and beautiful. So unusual here in this place.

She smiles at him widely and it’s like a mechanism switches in his head. He imagines this moment from the outside – the looks they’d get, the comments they’d make about this glamourous Spanish woman. Her name breaks on his lips in the sound of joy and he moves towards her, taking her tight in his arms and lifting her from her feet. He presses his lips into her hair and closes his eyes all the time thinking of the man he left in bed, the teenage tearaway across the road he can’t forget, can’t regret.

He’ll have to. He’ll just have to.


	9. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After sleeping with Robert, the only thing Aaron can think of is seeing him again. He tries to keep his growing attachment at bay but everything changes when he sees who has arrived in the village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge apologies for taking so long updating. My mind was pre-occupied with all the great stuff we're getting on screen. Hope you enjoy the latest chapter.

**Aaron**

 

When Robert’s gone, he doesn’t allow himself to stand at the window and watch him leave. He’s not going to be a girl about this. But in the end, when the front door has closed, he finds himself back in bed, telling himself he’s tired, pressing his nose into the linen, alive with the reverberating sensations of his body. He’s sore and his heart recovers like he’s tested it with a half marathon, but everything inside of him is awake. He lays with his eyes shut replaying selected highlights. He said Robert was a seven. He meant ten, more than ten. How could it be anything less? He imagines Robert still here with him, he invents things he might say, how he might flirt his way into another round. He thinks about Robert changing his mind, coming back to him, sliding his body under the covers. Aaron’s never felt desire like it. He feels new.

Aaron stretches himself out on the bed and his gaze falls to the bin, the tissue that conceals the used condom. It’s not how he thought he’d feel after the first time. He thought he’d be overwhelmed with disappointment, somehow unsatisfied that he’d built up all this pressure of being gay and losing his virginity for it to be a half-hour of something ordinary. That’s what it had been like when he’d lost it with Vic – all that hype and bullshit for nothing. It was nice enough and made him feel good for all of a hot white minute and then afterwards he was thinking about other things and feeling relieved that now he could tell everyone he’d had sex with a fit girl. But this feeling is entirely different. He doesn’t feel like the same Aaron woke up this morning.

Later, after he showers, his gaze drifting out the window with hope and silly anticipation, he scrolls through his phone contacts until he finds Robert’s name. He’d only been given his number an hour ago but he feels himself grin at the sight of the single ‘R’ in the list of contacts, this little secret between them.

_“Give me your phone,” Robert had said. By then he had his jeans on, but was still topless and brazen enough in his flirtatious sweep of Aaron’s body that Aaron could barely make eye contact with him. He couldn’t get his head around the idea that moments ago he’d been so caught up in the moment that he’d had his hands and mouth on Robert’s body._

_“What for?” Aaron had said, sheepishly reaching for it anyway, embarrassed that it was an old and crappy one, not like Robert’s flash touch-screen one._

_“In case I need you,” Robert said, flicking up his gaze from the screen just for a second long enough to make Aaron blush, to make his stomach crumple. “Car emergencies. You know.”_

_“Oh,” Aaron said, heat swelling in his face and darting his gaze away. Too keen, he was embarrassing himself._

_Robert tossed the phone back, the single letter ‘R’ and a phone number illuminated white. He pressed his knuckles into the mattress and leaned in, his voice taking on a molten smoothness that had Aaron’s hands twitching. “And for working on my score,” Robert said. He wasn’t letting his ‘seven out of ten’ mark go._

_Aaron bit away a smile, glad that he hadn’t been any more generous with that score._

He sits looking at Robert’s number and for half a minute thinks about texting him. What would he even say? He’d look desperate, pathetic. He thinks about going to the pub – at least he doesn’t need an excuse for that – but he doesn’t know how Robert will react around him now. It’s not like he’s out; it’s not like he’s even single.

It hits him that this is the first time he’s ever thought about Robert’s girlfriend in all this. She’d almost stopped existing to him. Aaron slides his phone away and sits on the edge of his bed, dressed in the clothes Robert had removed from him item by item. He’s as bad as his mum, he’s a Dingle alright. Home wreckers, boyfriend stealers, cheats the lot of them. He didn’t mean…he didn’t want..

But it happened. And he wants it to happen again. This girl of Robert’s is a stranger to him, an idea. She doesn’t seem real. He doesn’t have to look at her every day or greet her in the street like he hasn’t been in bed with her boyfriend. She doesn’t exist.

*

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” Paddy asks. “Because I thought you were faking it this morning but now I really am concerned.”

Paddy had walked in through the door around six thirty, red in the face and carrying about three more kit bags than looked necessary. Aaron had been in the kitchen when he’d heard Paddy come in and called out _“Perfect timing!”_. He’d done a fry up and enough for two. He’d thought about Paddy on the never-ending mission Robert had sent him on just so that they had the house to themselves and guilt made him decide to cook. Of course when Paddy walked in, all he wanted to talk about was his nightmare of a day and how he’d left multiple angry voicemails on the farmer’s mobile, the one who’d messed him around. Aaron couldn’t help but smile at that, imagining Robert listening to each one and having a laugh to himself. But it transpired that after an hour of searching for this farmer’s address Paddy had given up and gone on some more call-outs, ones that had taken him all afternoon.

It was only when Paddy stopped his anecdote filled relay of events, that he noticed Aaron plating up two sets of food. _“Since when do you cook?”_

“Sorry for doing you a favour,” Aaron says. “And no I’m not ill, actually. What I mean is – I’m feeling loads better thanks for asking.” He feels different, he just hopes he doesn’t look any different.

“So what time did you manage to drag your sorry state out of bed?”

Aaron’s flooded with a vision, a heart pounding audio memory, of Robert moaning into his mouth, Aaron’s cock leaking cum onto their bodies.

“Dunno,” Aaron says, masking the jitteriness of his hands by reaching into the cupboard for the sauce.

“Well I meant it about tomorrow, you know?” Paddy says. “No excuses. I don’t care what state you’re in, what’s wrong or what’s fallen off. You’re going to be in there. Working.”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Yes!” Paddy says, taking a seat at the table. “And you said the same yesterday and look where that got us.”

“You’re such an old woman,” Aaron says, slapping the plate down in front of Paddy with such force that the sauce from the baked beans slopped over the side and onto the table mat. “I’ll be there. Now eat your tea and shut up.”

*

He watches the lights behind the pub windows. He watches the street. He looks for him in the shadows of other men and then looks back at his phone. He had stupid hopes he might text. That he might have found himself as lonely and bored and horny as Aaron had. That he might have found somewhere for them to go. He hasn’t text. But Aaron still looks anyway, too excited to sleep, too electric to do anything. It’s out of body, these feelings, out of control.

He lays down in bed, flat on his back, and runs his thumbs down over his legs, his thighs. He imagines the sound of Robert breathing. He imagines the sight of him in the doorway.

Aaron slips his hand into his underwear and gives into fantasy, wondering how it all came to this.

*

He’s a glorified cleaner, receptionist and dog-sitter in the surgery all day, but it has its perks. It takes his mind off his phone and off the fact Robert hasn’t contacted him. He can’t check his phone too much, in case Paddy gets suspicious or irritated that he’s time wasting when he should be helping to prep the room for the next patient, but when he does look he can’t help the cavity that opens up inside him. He tries to reason with himself, tries to stamp down on this growing attachment. Robert’s not invested in him, he’s not at the pub pining. They had sex, for someone like Robert it’s casual, meaningless.

Early afternoon there’s a lull of clients coming in, only Mr Briggs and his dachshund to worry about and Aaron decides to try his luck and persuade Paddy into letting him take an early dinner in the pub. Paddy says yes without even realising what he’s agreed to, but Aaron doesn’t wait around for him to correct himself and rushes out the door. A few paces away from the surgery he takes out his phone and in a reckless moment decides to text Robert. He keeps it simple, casual, just “ _Drink?”_ and puts his phone away before heading towards the pub.

He hears a car approaching and it pulls up outside the pub before he gets there. He recognises the car as Robert's and feels the pressure of his heartbeat tighten. He’s thinking about how to approach him, whether to speak to him or keep things really secret and avoid his gaze, when the passenger door of the car opens and a tall blonde woman steps out, pulling a striking blue coat around her slim frame. She leans on the car door, watching as Robert emerges from the driver’s side. The way she looks at him. Aaron knows.

And he knows that feeling polluting him, making him want to run and hide.

*

He’s stuck. Too close to the pub and the car to make an escape, too startled to approach. Robert looks up and that wide, brilliant smile which had been aimed at his girlfriend completely dissolves as he sees Aaron. He falters and Aaron swallows, looks away and begins walking closer, at an awkwardly laboured speed.

“Why don’t you head inside and get us a table,” Aaron hears Robert say to her. “I just need a word with someone. Okay?” She passes and kisses him on the cheek, something he accepts with a smile and a squeeze of her arms.

Robert hesitates before walking over; Aaron can sense something ticking behind his eyes, thoughts working overtime. He doesn’t walk with the swagger he did yesterday, not the same smooth surety in his face. His hands are in his pockets, head slightly bowed. Aaron realises his position is a mirror.

“Before you ask,” Robert says, his voice a bedraggled whisper. “I had no idea she was coming, alright?”

Aaron looks away, down Main Street. The day feels colder now than it did in the morning. “Nothing to do with me,” Aaron says.

“Okay,” Robert says, shifting on his feet and then feeling the need to continue, keeps speaking. “She just showed up last night, after…”

“As I said,” Aaron says, fixing him with a stare. He knows his face has changed, he can see it in Robert’s eyes. “None of my business.”

Robert’s head drops lower, just his gaze darting upwards to check Aaron’s still standing there when he starts talking again. “Look, she’ll be gone in a few days.”

Aaron deflects him with the shake of his head. His body is rigid, angled away from him. “It was a one-off, right? Better we just keep it that way.” His jaw hurts. Everything does.

For a moment, Robert doesn’t move. And then he corrects himself, straightens up, is taller over Aaron than he ever seemed before.

“Yeah,” Robert says, with one solitary nod. “You’re probably right.”

They stand facing each other, joined by the way their frosted breaths meet the air. The low winter sun makes Robert’s skin look golden, a stretch of freckles on his cheeks. Yesterday Aaron felt as if he knew him, as if warmth radiated from Robert just for him. He shouldn’t have fooled himself that it might ever be more than sex, even if his girlfriend hadn’t appeared, that’s all it would have ever been. What could he ever give Robert? Robert’s a man of the world – loaded, experienced, property in Spain, a successful business. Why would he ever be interested in a kid like him?

There’s a fizz of excitement, anticipation, that withers in Aaron. It looks like Robert is about to say something else, but he stops himself and looks away and eventually they separate and turn around – Robert to the pub, and Aaron back home.

*

He doesn’t go to the pub that night. He can’t face it. He spends the night in his room, on the PlayStation and even Paddy comments on his total shift in mood. _Not boy hormones again_ , he jokes and then laughs at his own comment which makes it even worse. Aaron turns off his phone, trying not to think about that unanswered text, that stupid stupid suggestion of a drink and the hope he’d pinned onto it, and loses himself in the rapid fire of Call of Duty.

*

Adam practically jumps on his back the next time they see each other, when Aaron’s coming out of the café on his way to work. He’d kept his head down, ordered a takeaway and prayed he wouldn’t bump into Robert and his girlfriend. Adam tried to scare him and ended up pressing down on his shoulders like he’s aiming for a piggyback.

“Mate, where have you been? I was texting you!”

He’s spilt tea on the ground because of Adam and tuts, shoving him away. “Phone’s knackered. Reckon it’s about time Paddy forked out for a new one.” He casts a look over his shoulder at Adam, who appears to be following him to work. “What did you want anyway?”

“Charming!” Adam says. “I can see when I’m wanted, can’t I?”

Aaron rolls his eyes and slows down so they can actually have a conversation.

“Wednesday,” Adam says.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Oh don’t play dumb,” Adam says, punching him on the arm. “It’s the big one-nine!”

“It’s not a big anything,” Aaron says.

“It’s your birthday!” Adam says. “And as you’re not making any plans then I had to do it for you.”

“What?” He groans. “I don’t want to do anything. Why can’t we just have a drink in the pub and go home?”

“Because you’re gonna be nineteen, not ninety!” He pulls an arm around Aaron’s shoulders walking him towards the garage. “And my friend, because you can’t stay on the shelf forever. You’ve yet to experience my spectacular wingman skills and I assure you that after a proper night out with me, you won’t be ending the night just you and your laptop – you get what I’m saying?!”

Aaron grimaces, making grossed out noises as he tries to worm away from Adam. As he pushes Adam away from him, he sees Robert walking down the street, his arm around the waist of his girlfriend. She’s beautiful. It makes his throat hurt. He can’t tear his gaze away.

Adam notices their approach. “So she does exist,” Adam says, giving Aaron a nudge.

“Looks like it.”

“How the hell did he pull a woman like that? I’m telling you…”

Aaron feels it, a cold prickle, as Robert walks by them, his eyes giving Aaron the once over. It would be unnoticed by anyone but Aaron, but he feels it, as if it’s Robert’s hands on his body again. It’s as if his whole body is screaming.

Adam is watching them, well – watching her, walk by, coming back to the conversation only when Aaron speaks.

“So about Wednesday night then.”

“You’re up for it?”

“Got nothing better to do, have I?”

 


	10. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week on from his girlfriend's arrival, Robert's perfect life is beginning to crack as the lies keep building. And everything is made worse when he learns that Aaron has begun dating a new guy and he struggles to contain his jealousy.

**Robert**

It’s a dream. He knows it’s a dream but he lets it play out anyway. Lets the images flow like he’s sitting in a cinema, yet experiencing the physical sensation of it all. He’s standing at a fence, at a gate. It feels like his dad’s funeral but it’s not. He’s staring out across the fields, the greens and browns, the smokiness of the air. There’s a bonfire somewhere. Aaron’s there too, standing next to him in just a t-shirt even though it’s winter and there are goosebumps covering his forearms. Their arms are touching as they stand side by side at the fence, until Aaron moves away, sweeping his hand across Robert’s arm and leading him back to the farm house. The house is a twisted mixture of houses from his past, but Aaron is on the stairs of Annie’s Cottage, holding out his hand. And then they’re in Robert’s old bedroom, the one he had at fifteen, preserved that way and Aaron is undressing him on the path to the bed. He knows he’s dreaming – and he tells Aaron, but Aaron ignores him, pressing his lips to Robert’s mouth and hitching his breath in the same way he did when Robert made him come. He can feel Aaron’s hardness in the sway of their bodies, as they land on the bed and Aaron threads his fingers through Robert’s hair. _Let me_ , Aaron says, touching him with a confidence that makes Robert nervous. He looks at the door and then back to Aaron’s face. He has this young, impish grin, a wet bottom lip. Aaron’s mouth heads south and Robert’s body spreads against the duvet. He feels like he’s going to explode even before Aaron’s used his tongue on him. He’s naked now, from the waist down and Robert’s name is on Aaron’s lips over and over like it’s a secret he can’t stop saying. His mouth opens and their eyes meet. _Oh god, oh fuck_.

It’s a dream. He knows it’s a dream but he lets it play out anyway.

*

A week has passed since…since Camila arrived. Since he lead Aaron upstairs and had sex with him. In those seven days he has lied to himself that the memories of Aaron’s body – of Aaron’s mouth, of Aaron’s moans, of Aaron’s light, nervous touch – have faded. They haven’t. They’re there when he wakes up, when he sees him, when he touches Camila. The lingering, unfinished lust has wrapped itself around his guilt and now they are one, growing inside of him daily. He can’t escape it.

His first thought is to get out of Emmerdale, of the UK, as fast as he can. He could get back to Spain, borrow money from someone and try and salvage the business. But the reality, staring him in the face when he checks his bank balance, is that he can scarcely afford six month’s rent on his apartment out there, let alone borrow enough to keep his business afloat. And he isn’t going grovelling, not to anyone. There has to be another way.

The guilt makes everything worse. He’s taken her to restaurants he can’t afford, bought her the DKNY handbag from the department store window she cooed over. He loved the attention the sales person bestowed on them both, a film of jealousy over every interaction – this perfect couple, this lavish gift of love. The handsome, wealthy boyfriend unblinking as he handed over his credit card and squeezed her waist, offering to buy her the matching purse. And her turning him down, telling him he’d spoiled her enough – that she missed him, not his wallet. But Robert knowing, _knowing_ , she couldn’t really mean that. She’s never known him as a man down on his luck, he’s never let her.

A week on from when she arrived and Christmas has all been packed away for another year, the pub, the café, the houses along Main Street have all returned to normal. Robert knows, as they lie there together in his borrowed bed above the pub, that Camila is waiting for him to give her a date for returning to Spain and every day he distracts her with sex and diverts the conversation away from the business and the things in his life that have slipped out of his control.

That morning he leaves her to work from the pokey little bedroom with Diane’s temperamental WiFi and he heads off, claiming to have meetings about the business expansion and when she says: “Darling, we need to start making plans about going home.”

“Don’t you like it here?” he says, leaning on the back of the chair she has pulled up to the dresser as a makeshift desk. He watches her face shift, an uncomfortable twist of guilt across her mouth. He knows what he is doing, that this question doesn’t just mean Emmerdale but him, his core, his family. The one he spent so long pretending to her didn’t exist, wasn’t important.

“Of course,” she says, reaching to touch his cheek and him feeling the cool press of her ringed fingers. “It’s exactly how I imagined it.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We can’t stay here forever, can we? Not just work, but your stepmother. She’s been so kind, but you can’t really expect her to keep letting us stay here without contribution.”

Robert straightens, faced with the reality of this perilous and fragile set up. “Nothing’s stopping you from going home if that’s what you want.”

“Robert,” she says, hands falling to her lap, burned by his swift change in tone. “That’s not what I meant at all!”

“I need to go,” he says, weaving away for her attempts to placate him. What reasons can he invent for needing to stay longer? Before long he’ll crumble and she’ll see the pitiful state of him. She met him only eighteen months ago, not long after dad’s funeral and by then he was working his way up to company director, burying his grief with hard work. Twenty three. In suits and flash cars. Everything he’d ever wanted. She made him the complete package. He was desirable then, successful. To have it all and then to lose it – what an embarrassment he’d be.

*

He stews over a coffee in the café, irritated by anyone who sits at a table close to him. He paid in lose change, meaning Bob was quick to make a sarcastic comment about not realising people with Robert’s sort of lifestyle even carried cash these days.

There isn’t anyone he really knows in there today which is a welcome relief from the barrage of questions which usually greet him. He has a reputation, one that Victoria keeps alive everywhere she goes. It would be touching, sweet even, if he didn’t have to maintain the act at every turn. He uses his intermittent phone data to check his emails and feels his blood curdle cold at the list of supplies cancelling orders or querying why their invoices haven’t been paid. He opens a new tab and googles ‘fast loans’ and then ‘filing for bankruptcy’. He has savings – enough to rent grotty flat in the north of England probably – but nothing that would come close to the beautiful house in Madrid he had planned for him and Camila.

There’s a shift of cold air pushing through the café and boisterous laughter and when Robert looks up he sees Adam Barton steering Aaron through the door of the café, clapping his shoulders like he’s won the premiership. Robert’s gut tightens and he looks away, back down into his coffee, knowing that Aaron has seen him too because he hears him suggest to Adam that they get their drinks to take away, but Adam’s having none of it.

“Nah nah nah,” he says. “Don’t think you can get out of this one, mate. I’ve hardly seen ya since the big birthday night out!”

There’s something in the way Adam says this, along with the sight of him elbowing Aaron in the ribs (Robert allows himself to look up and look over in fleeting snatches) that makes Robert feel a little queasy and hot. He hasn’t spoken to Aaron since they agreed to keep their encounter as a strictly one time thing. He’s tried to avoid him at every opportunity, hiding around corners, kissing Camila in front of him so he got the message loud and clear. It was over. It was just once. It was just sex. That was all it was.

“I told you everything,” Aaron says, before they put their order in at the counter. He makes it obvious in his tone and posture that he doesn’t want to talk about whatever it is and Robert feels resentment rising that Adam’s even asking when Aaron’s uncomfortable.

The only table free is the one nearest to Robert now. Adam’s oblivious to the bristling discomfort between them and nods out of politeness in Robert’s direction. He doesn’t even get the standard “Alright?” like Adam chucks out to everyone else.

“Details, I want details!” Adam says having assessed that they’re practically alone now and Aaron might want to talk. Robert can’t help but hear every word. “Not the gory bits, obviously.”

Aaron catches Robert’s eye and it’s like an explosion, a firework igniting inside him. He remembers the looks from Aaron that grazed him when they were in bed, the way his eyes just opened up and softened. The way he smiled, from nerves, from bliss. It was like nothing Robert had seen on anyone.

“He’s fit. Single,” Aaron says. Robert tenses at the confirmation of his dread. Aaron blinks and then looks away, breaking from their eye contact and his attention back to Adam. Robert feels the stab at the word ‘single’, the way it was said for his benefit. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like to him.

“And?”

“And what? We carried on talking after you left. Few more drinks. Went back to his. Don’t make it into big deal.”

Robert’s throat constricts, struggles to swallow and he takes a sip of his too-hot coffee to try and force it to return to normal. A thousand images rise to the front of his mind. Hearing Aaron talk, boast, like this doesn’t sound like him at all. Where is that shyness, the discomfort, the awkwardness? Is that gone now? All it took was this new guy to come along and Aaron’s giving it out to anyone that looks twice at him?

“Mate! No big deal?!” Adam says, grinning with laddish pride. Robert hates him.

Robert can see the muscles in Aaron’s cheek twitch and click, his gaze flicking towards Robert. He knows what he’s doing and yet Robert can’t help but tense, unable to concentrate on anything but the thought of some other guy all over Aaron on the first night of meeting him.  

“Well I’m seeing him tonight so,” Aaron says with a shrug.

“Second date? Yes, mate!” Adam says, laughing and leaning back in his chair. “See I told you, wingman extraordinaire.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright!” Aaron says.

Adam reaches over and squeezes Aaron’s face. “Nothing to do with these chops, boy!”

Robert leaves the rest of his coffee and exits from the café, knowing that Aaron’s eyes are on him when he leaves, knowing he’s being petulant about this, knowing it’s envy he feels raw inside his chest. And he shouldn’t. But he can’t get Aaron out of his head and he doesn’t want him in anyone else’s.

*

He spends the rest of the day calling in favours from old friends and contacts, seeing if he can cobble together some support to save the business without telling them as much. He tells them what he tells everyone else, that he’s setting up a London based sister company. But they all flake on him, say they’re tied up with their own investments and it’s a bad time financially. Like he doesn’t fucking know that already.

He knows what he’d normally do in this mood. He’d find a bar. A girl. Or a guy. A warm mouth. A distraction. Somewhere and someone who he doesn’t have to pretend around. He can be faceless, nameless, no one. No pressure, no strings. One quick thrill, one burst of relief and only a small pang of guilt after. Guilt is the easiest emotion to deal with. He’s had plenty of practice shutting it down.

It’s dark when he gets back to the pub and he passes through the bar instead of going around the back, considering ordering a drink before he returns Camila, but then he spots Aaron at the bar. He’s in a pale blue shirt and a dark grey jacket. It jars Robert to see him like this, out of his t-shirt and joggers, but then he remembers why and Robert pushes straight past, resenting everything about the sight. He catches the tail end of what Paddy is saying to Aaron, in the stuttered garble he manages:

“Now, I’m just saying and it’s under no…no expectation, but Marlon and I are going out for the night and I probably won’t be back until gone eleven. I’m just saying. No pressure. Honestly. But the house will be empty, if you wanted to…I’m not saying you should…but if you wanted to…”

“Alright, Paddy! Just leave it alone, will ya?!” Aaron says and then hunches over his beer as Robert passes.

*

Diane is preparing a home cooked tea when he walks through to the back. He musters a polite greeting and an agreement that they’ll both have their tea with her, before he heads upstairs to see Camila. She’s sat on the bed with the television on and his laptop half-open by her side. His chest contracts, but she scrambles up off the bed to greet him, pressing her small frame against his.

“You’ve been gone all day,” she says. “I even had to go for a country walk earlier. This is what you drove me to!” She laughs and he matches it, apologising and kissing the crown of her head.

“You used my laptop?” he says, trying not to raise any alarm in his voice, keeping it measured and the accusation away.

“Just for a minute or two,” she says and turns to open up the lid. “I don’t have Excel on mine. Well, it keeps saying the files are corrupt and I needed to read something.” He sees her grinning at the laptop, her speed of conversation increasing. “But guess what popped up onscreen when I was using it?”

He feels sick, laughs it off. “What?”

“You’re a terrible man, Robert Sugden,” she says, but there’s nothing serious about the way she says it. She opens an email full screen and he leans down to focus, the light from the ceiling glaring on the screen. “I wasn’t snooping,” Camila says. “It just popped - ta dah!”

It’s an email from an estate agent in Madrid, a follow up about property details he asked for a few months back. Full colour photographs of the house, a vivid description. He’d stopped enquiring about it when he realised he couldn't afford it, but the agent wasn’t giving up any time soon. His eyes scanned the email: _You will have a second look, Mr Sugden? I am sure the property will be to your liking. A beautiful family home for your future. Your girlfriend will adore. Perhaps we can arrange a viewing. You would be most satisfied to live here. Madrid welcomes you._

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Camila says, throwing her arms around him and planting a succession of kisses against his cheek. “Oh Robert it’s beautiful. It’s the one, isn’t it? A home, for us?”

“Yeah,” he says, hardly able to breathe. “I just wanted it to be a surprise.”

*

He struggles to swallow the food, the blur of Diane and Camila’s chat washing over him like the sound of a half-tuned radio. His eyes are on the clock and he thinks of the bar next door. Of Aaron. In that shirt, of his waist underneath it. Another man’s hands.

Robert thinks of his world falling apart. He has nothing. He is nothing. How long until they all see that?

He can scrape together the last of the food from his plate and choke it down. Diane’s a good cook, but he can’t stomach it tonight. Camila is already telling Diane about the place in Madrid. She is already planning the décor of their bedroom. The house warming party. Diane is dismayed when Camila says she wants to look into flights there straight away so they can go and look at the property and make proper plans.

Robert isn’t aware of how he does it, the act is almost unconscious, but he manipulates the conversation so that Camila – she’s had a long day of work and excitement and country walks – takes a lie down upstairs, that Diane puts her feet up, that he puts the plates in the dishwasher which earns him the privilege of going next door for a beer.  

But he’s not going for a beer.

He waits long enough in the men’s bathroom for him. All it takes is a text to get him there. _Need to talk. Now. Pub toilets._ A ten minute wait because Aaron’s stubborn, wants to be cruel to Robert. Then he’s there, standing in front of Robert, the unfamiliar shirt, too big, hanging from his body, hands in his pockets. All scowls and distrust.

“What?” he says, shaking his head, jaw set. His eyes are icy, frozen for Robert’s benefit.

“You’re on a date.”

Aaron scoffs and his eyes roll off to the side. “And?”

Robert says nothing else, surging forward until both of his hands come up to Aaron’s face and all Aaron can do is reach out – fingers clutching at Robert’s shirt – to steady himself and stumble backwards under the force of the kiss. And Robert feels him give in, give way to it and the heat that's been building between them, even in their separate worlds.  

 

 

  


	11. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Aaron's date in the bar, Robert's girlfriend upstairs and a kiss Robert initiated, Aaron has a battle of conscience and desire on his hands.

**Aaron**

His back hits the wall and their mouths ricochet in breaths and moans. Aaron feels himself slide, kept upright by his white knuckles gripped around Robert’s shirt, as Robert’s hands move up under the hem of Aaron’s date-shirt and caress the curve of his lower back. There isn’t a battle to be found in this kiss, Aaron knows he’s already lost. Robert’s tongue edges into Aaron’s mouth and it’s all Aaron can do to keep breathing. His hands flatten against Robert’s chest – all warmth and firmness - and then there’s the force of Robert’s thigh pushing between his legs, seeking the confirmation of desire that’s been there from the second their bodies touched. Aaron steals a breath in the brief shuddering separation of their mouths and when they kiss again, his tongue unwinds against Robert’s – showing him his newfound confidence. There’s a weightlessness to the moment which makes it feel like fantasy, without consequence, and he lets himself indulge in it, this hot swell of the forbidden in the air. Robert has made him into this –  and the loss of control, the loss of reason and morality, it should frighten him, but it doesn’t, it ignites life into him. From the moment Aaron caught Robert at the BnB, it’s like he’s been pushed down this unfamiliar path.

Then there’s a loud burst of voices in the corridor outside the toilets and Aaron pushes Robert away, knowing his expression (guilt, fear, panic) doesn’t match the ease of Robert’s – although he is the one with the girlfriend, more reason to be fearful. Robert stands in front of him, the image of calm, as the arousal Aaron felt is pushed away by guilt, anger. As if Robert is to blame for all of this, this spell he’s got him under.  

“What the hell are you doing?” Aaron says, his words hissed between bared teeth. He is back on earth, thrown there. Shame burning him up, curling his fists.

“Not here, alright?! Not here. Outside. Out the back.” Robert walks out, leaving Aaron alone breathless and guilty. He runs his hands across his face, pinching skin between his fingers and palms. And then just as he knew he would, he slips through the pub, managing to stay unnoticed by his date and out into the pub car park.

Robert is in the shadows and waits until Aaron is blackened by its darkness, before he reaches for him again. How easy it would be to press their bodies together in the cold, to let Robert push him up against the icy walls of the pub. Lust is new to him, dangerous, overwhelming. He’d never understood before, never connected to this so-called craziness people experienced. Like his mum and her constant addiction to Carl. But he understands now.  

He manages to push Robert off and sees him smart, frustration making him stiffen.

“What you playing at?” Aaron says. His voice is low, a simmering violence underneath it. “What about your girlfriend?”

“What about her?”

Aaron fumes, a fist raising and pushed against his gritted teeth. “She’s upstairs.” He knows he’s a hypocrite, that he kissed him back, that he slept with him knowing he was taken. He couldn’t stop himself. Now he’s stopping himself. Trying to. She’s here. It shouldn’t make a difference but it does. Robert’s lack of guilt bothers him – it makes his feel irrational, gives him excuses he shouldn’t make.

Robert thrusts his hands into his pockets and leans in closer to Aaron. An amber glow from the inside of the pub jerks across Robert’s clenching jaw.

“And you. _Him_ in there,” Robert says.

Aaron smirks. It all makes sense, the marking of the territory, feelings of inadequacy.

“It’s just a date,” Aaron says. “I’m not going to marry him.” He says it so it hurts. He sees it in the flinch of Robert’s face. They hadn’t talked about it, but Aaron knew and he’d heard enough from Victoria, about what sort of man Robert intended to be, the life he dreamed of. Wife. Kids. The perfect family man. _That’s the thing with my brother,_ Vic had boasted, _he just always seems to land on his feet and get exactly what he wants in life._

“Oh right, but you’ve slept with him?” It’s mocking, dismissive. Robert bites back just as hard.

“And what’s it any of your business?”

“So you have.” Robert seems to confirm this in his own head with half a nod. He’s closer, in Aaron’s space now, his breathing heavier, his gaze flitting erratically over Aaron’s face.

“Why? You jealous?” he says, sneering, trying to stand up to be as tall as him, the gap between them closing.  

He hasn’t slept with the guy. He’s thought about it. It’s been alluded to, in the dark of a club, in the low of his ear. Aaron felt a pull in his stomach, but when he let a shiver of anticipation travel the length of him he realised it wasn’t Matt he was picturing beside him in bed.

The truth of it is that it’s been Matt texting him and Aaron giving a half-hearted response, flimsy plans and reluctant agreements to meet up again. It was the thought of Robert that made Aaron talk to him in the first place; it was the thought of Robert with her. It was the hope that Matt might make him forget about Robert, that he could kiss someone else and feel half of what he felt with Robert – and that would be enough. It wasn’t enough; it isn’t. He compared kisses, compared the sensation of Matt’s hands on his back. That one time with Robert was growing and growing in significance the longer he kept replaying it. He’d convinced himself, or at least tried, that this was all one sided, that Robert hadn’t thought about him at all. That he had to snap out of it. He’d done unreciprocated feelings, he’d had low rumblings of pining in the past. He wasn’t going to let himself be a fool to it. But then there was Robert’s reaction in the café, the jealousy that smoked from him. Aaron had stoked it, wanted to know if this wasn’t just him after all. If Robert still wanted him. If he, some no-hope teenage scally, was desired by the man who always got what he wanted in life.    

Robert stares at Aaron’s mouth in a way that makes Aaron nervous, swallow. His heartbeat feels like a fist fighting to get out of his chest. Now he knows, like he’s hoped for all along, that Robert’s excuses are all just that.  

“Tell him to go home. Tell him you’re ill,” Robert says. His breath clouds white in the frosty air. Aaron begins thinking about the clash, of cold skin and winter’s grip against the pulse of their warm bodies, their open mouths.

“No,” Aaron says, head tilted up to meet Robert’s. He’s defiant, but close enough that Robert’s cologne makes his head spin. It conjures images, plays with his mind. _He’s on his back, hands shakily placed on Robert’s naked hips_.

“Why not?”

“What about your girlfriend?”

Robert seems to take that information and dispose of it. His teeth grind and his head turns, a cursory look towards the pub. He’s lit up in its light. He’s gold and black. Desirable. Dangerous. He steps forward, blocking all of Aaron’s light so there’s nothing but darkness and white breath between them. Aaron’s short curls of breath catch against Robert’s smile.

“What she doesn’t know…” he says. Robert’s gaze is directed at Aaron’s bottom lip and Aaron finds himself wetting it with the edge of his tongue in a move that feels twisted between deliberate and unconscious.

He doesn’t say anything else, but Robert’s next movement says it loud and clear: _I know you can’t stop thinking about me too._ The sentiment is thrust roughly against Aaron, as Robert takes hold of him, one hand gripped around his waist and the other against his face, grazing his fingers against the soft grain of Aaron’s hair and kisses him hard on the mouth. It’s a primal noise he makes when he kisses him and Aaron absorbs it, feels it in the centre of his chest. Robert’s lips pull at him and Aaron plants his hands on Robert’s shoulders, body melting against the soft leather of Robert’s jacket.

Aaron knows three things in that moment.

One. If Robert’s girlfriend happened to be passing one of the upstairs windows that overlooked the pub car park, she’d see her boyfriend - the man who’s meant to be husband material – pushing another man up against the stone wall of the pub to kiss him deeper. She wouldn’t hear her boyfriend panting, wouldn’t see the strain of his erect cock pressed against Aaron.

Two. Matt will probably go looking for him. He’ll try the toilets first, sneak a glance at the backroom too. He’ll check out front, in case Aaron’s gone for a smoke even though he’s sworn he’s giving up. He won’t check the car park. He won’t see Aaron with his hand in another man’s hair. He won’t know the lad he’s trying to date has become someone else. A cheat. A liar. Making up for the years he spent torturing himself, denying himself. Living in the dark.

Three. The third thing he knows. Paddy’s out for the night and the cottage is empty.  

*

Aaron does the half-decent thing in the end and texts Matt his excuses. Half-decent might be pushing it. But they’re not official, they’re not even boyfriends. Matt will move onto another guy in Bar West and forget he even kissed the surly nineteen year old on his birthday, the one from the country village, the one who never seemed all that interested anyway. Aaron fools himself that it’s this easy to lie, to be guilt free. Everyone else in this village has slept with someone they shouldn’t, why should he be any different?

He just didn’t know he was so good at blocking things out when it suited him. Like Robert’s girlfriend upstairs in the pub, waiting for him, while he has one pint. While he gives head to the mechanic who lives opposite. They’re not even upstairs. Robert won’t wait and neither can he. Aaron comes into Robert’s mouth, hanging onto the rails of the stairs, still saying _fuck_ and _shit_ on the come down, as Robert kisses his inner thighs.

They used to talk about girls and blow jobs at college. He’d listened to it long enough in the common room to know how to brag, to say the right thing. To talk about older experienced girls who had the best technique. To prove he was as gagging for it as the rest of them. It would leave him empty, deflated, talking about it. Knowing he could never experience it like they did, would never find the same sort of thrill or hunger from it. It used to make him feel queasy, confused, to realise how little he connected to these other lads.

And then there was Robert. That lads banter could never have prepared him for this feeling.

Really, he’d almost forgotten about Matt by the time they’d got to the cottage, but then his phone pinged saying: _You ok? Got a pint waiting_. He read the text as Robert was pulling down his underwear and swayed through his badly typed reply. Robert wasn’t playing, wasn’t teasing. Aaron had to text – _Sorry, feel really shit. Stomach bug. Gone home. Soz._ (without any effort to make future plans) – as Robert took the length of him into his mouth.

“He’s not going to try and come over, is he?” Robert says when he’s up off his knees, wiping his mouth and then kissing Aaron softly, before he starts up the foot of the stairs. “Be your nursemaid.”

Aaron stares him down. He knows what Robert means. “We haven’t done anything. I haven't slept with him,” Aaron says, pulling his underwear back up and locking the front door, as if to prove a point. “And what’s it to you? I’m not yours. You’re not mine.”   

Robert smiles. Satisfied on the verge of smug.

*

If Aaron thinks sleeping with him for a second time would scratch an itch, cure the growing fixation, then he’s wrong. The second time they have sex it’s different. Slower. Closer. Louder, less inhibited in the dark, empty house. They don’t have to worry about the street, the vet’s surgery next door, their own shyness. Aaron’s no longer a virgin, his fears are shedding. He knows every part of the story now and he loves it, wants it. Wants a repeat.

Robert’s sleepy when they’re finished. They don’t talk, but in his lethargic state, he finds the energy to run his hands over Aaron’s rising and falling chest. His fingertip circles Aaron’s nipple and his ticklish charms makes Aaron turn his head.

“You wanna try something else?” Robert says.

Aaron’s throat squeezes and his eyes flick away from Robert’s face.

“How about…” Robert begins, shifting on the bed until his torso is pinned over the top of Aaron’s, arm propping him up. He wears the grin Aaron can’t say no to. “…you fuck me?” His hand crawls to Aaron’s cock, running his thumb over the head until he starts to stiffen.

Aaron swallows. His _yeah_ ghosting in his breathlessness. He can feel Robert almost sizing him up in his hand and his cock hardens at the thought. Robert’s eyes gleam, even in the dark of the bedroom. He’s half-lidded then, irresistible. Aaron watches him clamber, naked, to the foot of the bed to retrieve the condoms and lube he’d kicked out of the way earlier. The sheets are a mess. Unless he manages to sneak them into the washing machine unnoticed, Paddy will just keep looking at him again, and then looking the opposite way, biting his tongue so as not to give him any sort of reassuring chat about wet dreams. Those days, of panicked, teenage confusion are long gone. Replaced instead by something far bigger than he can control.

A curl of a smile plays at Robert’s lips. Gentle, teasing. There’s a tightness in Aaron’s chest that feels warm, but he can’t quite acknowledge it until Robert kisses him gently on the mouth. He wants to ask him, hadn’t he ought to be going back to her? But he keeps quiet and still, letting Robert roll the condom on him.

He has the same worries he always has. _What if I’m not good enough?_ And it’s like Robert senses it, because in a voice that sounds rich and honeyed, he says his name like the beckoning of a finger. “Aaron...Aaron. Come on, Aaron.”

He does everything to Robert that Robert’s done to him. One finger first, watching Robert’s body slump and his forehead press against his arm. Watching the smiles and the groans escape him.

“Is that…?”

Alright, okay, good, nice? What you wanted?

Robert’s hips buck back against him and he’s muffled, teeth tearing at the bed sheet. “You don’t have to be so cautious, Aaron. Fuck –“ Aaron has two fingers inside him before he can finish his sentence and the accidental brush of his cock against Robert’s ass makes Robert’s body jolt and reel backwards in impatience.

His free had smooths against Robert’s side, resting on his hip and stroking at his milky, freckled skin, and he eases out his fingers, reaching again for the lubricant. Everything that follows is in slow, silent concentration, dedication. It takes every restraint, every laboured breath not to rush into it. He exhales, pushing against the resistance and the gradual easing of Robert’s body, sinking into a shuddering rhythm to the sound of Robert’s low groans. He can see his white thumb prints on the flesh of Robert’s hips as he fucks him, deeper and harder when Robert asks for it. But somehow he just knows, can hear it in the strain of his cries.

And long after Aaron comes, after he’s binned the condom and laid sprawled on the bed, his whole body pulsing with the intensity of being inside Robert, he can still hear the way his name sounded on Robert’s tongue.

*

Afterwards their kisses are soft, lazy whispers, trapped in the intimacy of a world where only they exist. Reality hits soon after and Aaron packs away any hopes, any romanticism he’d been carrying as he watches Robert dress. It feels different from before somehow, like this night has broken the one night stand barrier. Robert smiles more. Aaron looks at him for longer. He’s never tried to spend too long thinking about or looking at a man’s body. The forbidden form of it. He’d always looked away, rationed himself. Starved. He feasts on Robert; he seems to like that, being adored, admired.

He stands at the foot of the bed in his tight boxer shorts, hands on hips. His gaze trawls Aaron’s body and lingers on the area of his groin, where the sheet is gathered.

“We’re doing that again,” he says with a smug confidence.

Aaron fidgets like he’s lost the ability to speak, only feeling his lips part as Robert kneels back onto the bed, his underwear riding low.

“If you still want this to carry on….” Robert says, leaning in and staring, fixated, with Aaron’s mouth.   

 


	12. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert goes to extreme lengths to keep his financial problems secret, but it's his growing attachment to Aaron which might prove the bigger problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge apologies for it being absolutely forever since the last update. I won't leave it as long next time! Thank you as ever for your lovely words and your patience!

**Robert**

January rolls on and in the end Robert finds it becomes easier to coast along, wrapping everyone in the same illusion that everything’s still fine, that he’s still a success. He manages, by sheer charm and a commitment to staying in bed for a whole day, to convince Camila that they can stay in Emmerdale until February and that he knows someone who knows someone who’ll be able to get them good last minute flights. She doesn’t say the things he expects her to, that what’s a couple of hundred to him when they’re about to buy a house, but he manipulates her enough (memories of his mother, memories of his father around every corner) to persuade her that they need to stay here in Emmerdale just a little longer. He doesn’t manage to crack into any real memories or thoughts of his parents, they are buried too deep, but he remembers a sob story that one of his colleagues once shared about a birthday gone wrong and a mother’s rescue of it. He tweaks it enough to make it sound like him and Sarah and then – when Camila’s hugged him tight and says she’s sure they can stay until February, they need a break – he texts to see if Aaron fancies a drive and they head out to some country lane and jerk each other off until their lungs have given up. He likes the feeling of relief it gives him. He likes the sight of Aaron knackered and blissed out on his backseats – it makes him feel like he can do something good. He likes that Aaron wants to stay a little longer, that they can sit in the car and listen to the radio and not say a word.

It's not all lies. Some truths have crept in when he started conjuring stories about his mother. Her voice is one he still lets haunt him, although it strays too far from earshot to ever really feel like home. Sometimes Robert feels like Sarah is trying to lead him somewhere and that’s why he can never hear her properly. He remembers a bed time or two where he’d tell her about all these great plans he had for the future. He’d list them on his fingers like he was writing a Christmas list. She never shot him down, never told him these were impossible dreams or give him a sneery look like his dad did, or let any disappointment show when he made it clear he didn’t and would never want to be a farmer.

They talked about money sometimes when he was getting ready for bed and she was trying to hurry him along. He’d ask her things about mortgages and investments and try to make sense of words he’d seen printed on his parents post or words he’d heard mentioned when the lines on their foreheads were the deepest cut. He’d asked once what ‘interest free’ meant, whether it meant you didn’t need to be interested in banking.

She’d laughed, distracted briefly from telling him to tidy up his bedroom. She was trying to sort out his duvet and fan it out until the quilt had realigned itself in the cover. He had Spiderman covers, the same ones he’d had for years and that soon he’d end up being embarrassed about cos lads at school started talking about taking girls into your bedrooms. He never had much chance to talk to his mum about that because she was dead not long after, when all his hormones started pinging and making him feel things about all sorts of people.

“Interest rates are extra money you have to pay back when you borrow money in a loan,” she said, smoothing out the creases with two hands once she’d told him to hop in and under the covers. “And some loan companies put huge amounts of interest on loans and you end up paying far more than you ever borrowed.”

He must have had a wrinkle on his forehead because she patted his head and told him not to worry about it. He was a good few years away from that. And then she told him if he ever did need to borrow money then he should always borrow it from the bank and not these companies you see advertising on the television straight after Christmas preying on vulnerable people desperate for cash. Those companies cause people even more problems, she said.

And even now he can hear her saying all these, right when he’s on the laptop looking for a quick way to get a loan. Just a payday one that’ll tide him over a few months to get plane tickets and god knows what else. He types in his details hearing his mother’s warning at every click of the mouse. It’s not even a company he’s heard of before, but it’ll do for now. As long as he doesn’t look at the interest rates.

*

It’s the third time they’ve done this now. Cold and uncomfortable in the car. He doesn’t let Aaron smoke in the car anymore or near him in case Camila smells it again and starts asking questions.

“I thought you were giving up,” Robert says, winding down the window as Aaron stubs it out and walks towards the car. He’s got a little silver chain around his neck today which Robert presumes he got for his birthday. It must be real or it at least it hasn’t gone green yet, because Robert saw no sign of it when he was kissing Aaron’s neck earlier, tongue licking the edges of his skin and the slight nick of his skin from overzealous teenage shaving.

“I thought you were finding us somewhere decent to go,” Aaron says, biting back, jumping into the passenger seat. He’s brazen now, in a cocky, sulky way that only makes Robert want to please him more and more. He’s difficult in the easiest way possible – Robert likes his kind of difficult. His kind of difficult, well, that can be soothed with a blowjob and a four pack of lager.

“And I said I’m working on it, didn’t I?” Robert says as Aaron climbs into the passenger seat. He squeezes Aaron’s thigh, thumb lingering on the soft wool of his joggers. He notices a faint mark on Aaron’s throat which wasn’t there earlier – of pressure, of teeth, of a really keen and intense reaction to an orgasm – and hopes it fades before anyone notices and asks questions. As for the location, it’s a situation he can’t deal with in his usual way. With his usual one night stands, he’d opt for their place or pay cash for a hotel room. He doesn’t have either luxury with Aaron, much as he’d enjoy the surrender of wonder written all over his face and the gratitude of his body. There might be the odd eyebrow raised behind reception desks if he turned up there with a nineteen-year-old chav chewing gum and slouching against a display rack of tourist pamphlets. Plus there’s something about hotels which make things serious, and what this is - is definitely not serious.

Aaron buckles up his seat belt and a look passes his face which Robert can only half-read. It’s the same look he gets after they’ve had sex and he’s overwhelmed, like he still isn’t quite sure what to do with his emotions. Robert thrives off the energy sex gives him, Aaron seems to flounder. He gets quiet sometimes, standoffish. He closes up, stops talking and Robert doesn’t know what to do with this. It reminds him too much of how he is when his head takes him to places he doesn’t want to visit, so he doesn’t push it with Aaron and then wonders why it bothers him so much.

Robert looks at the fastened seat belt. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

Aaron shrugs. “Don’t you?”

“I’m in a meeting,” Robert says without blinking. “All day.”

He hears the click and whoosh of the seat belt opening and rushing back into its place and the outside grey of the fog-covered fields blur and disappear out of sight when he lowers his head to Aaron’s lap.

*

It’s the dead of night when he gets the idea. Awake and listening to the snuffled breathing of Camila beside him. She doesn’t dream much, not when she’s asleep anyway – she’s told him that. He does. Nightmares mostly. But she’s peaceful, still when she sleeps. Not like him with the raging mind and kicking legs. She wakes up with bruises on her shins from his night time kicking. Tonight Robert finds sleep impossible. He can’t relax into its embrace, can’t let himself be smothered by darkness and exhaustion, even though his body feels as if it’s been filled with cement.

Earlier he had to sit beside her and make the phone call about the Madrid house, tell the agent that they were interested and wanted to go ahead with the purchase. He had the call on loudspeaker, Camila squeezed into his side. He hoped she couldn’t feel him sweating through his clothes as he bluffed his way through the call, agreeing to the amount he’d have to cough up for a deposit. He made it sound as if he had that kind of money just laying around. He didn’t even have half the amount he needed. By the end of the week he’d told the man on the phone, agreeing that if he was any later paying up then they’d lose the house.

He could take out another small loan, two grand, from another company he’d seen online, but he was still ten grand short.

Then, he lays there in the dark and gets the idea. Dismisses it. But how would she find out? How would she ever know? It couldn’t hurt her. Not in the long run. They’d have their house, their dream life. And before she realised he’d be up on his feet again, the business would be back in track. He only needs to borrow ten thousand, a small blip she won’t even notice.

Robert crawls out from under the covers, careful not to disturb Camila and takes her business laptop downstairs to the unlit privacy of Diane’s backroom. He knows the password. She never shies away from entering the password when he’s around. She trusts him. She doesn’t know of any reason not to. He opens up her accounts pages and fixes the numbers to a lower amount so he won’t leave a trace.

Transferring the money into his own account is the easiest part. Then he can sleep, taunted by an orchestra of nightmares while Camila sleeps soundly on beside him.

*

In the morning he kissed her goodbye, leaving her to book the interior designer she was excited about, the one she’d showed him the website portfolio of. He didn’t want to even think about the cost. It was making his skull explode. He watched over her as she did her usual check of the accounts and didn’t even falter at the money he’d siphoned off. He was in the clear.

Aaron’s less impressed at Robert’s genius location idea than Robert thought he might be. It takes a bit of coaxing for him to ignore the smell and the cold and relax enough to take his clothes off. Together, with a blanket Robert had stored in the boot of his car, they make a makeshift bed of hay. It’s better than the car at least. Robert can stretch Aaron out properly, enjoy every inch of him, make his skin prickle from the path of his tongue.

They’re warm and slick with heat and sweat and cum, lying flat side by side. It’s a relief to be there, to not have to talk or think or worry. Aaron talks sometimes when he feels like he should because it’s been silent for too long. But he talks about cars and engines and customers or his dog, Clyde. His world is simple, easy. It’s a comfort. Robert kisses that into him sometimes – his gratefulness. He’s a distraction, one that he wishes more and more would lift him out of reality.

He looks good, heavy-lidded and head turned to the side, blanket pulled up and around them both. Soft. Even though he should be anything but.

“What’s that look for?” Aaron says, immediately on the defensive.

“Nothing,” Robert says, propping up on one arm and leaning into him so that he can smell that stale warmth coming off him. He grins, unable to stop himself. He can see the outline of Aaron’s legs, the slight bulge of his dick. “You fancy going again…”

“I thought you were some hotshot businessman.”

It stung. “What’s that meant to mean?”

Aaron shrugged. “I’ve not actually seen you do any business.”

Robert sat up on the hay beside him, blanket slipping down to his waist. The act returns to him, fitting over his body like a shell. “It doesn’t need my attention twenty-four seven. I’ve got other people running the day to day. I’m not some pen-pusher. I’m the CEO.”

“Right,” Aaron says, staring upwards out of the broken planked roof and at the mottled blue sky. “And what would you have done. If you weren’t the big hotshot?” His voice seems soft then, far away and it makes Robert turn back and look at him, want to lay down next to him. There’s no accusation there, just interest.

“I don’t know,” Robert says. He leans on his knees, looking out to where the barn door is shut, knowing out there lies field after field, lands his family once owned. Land which should have been his, the responsibility of which he never wanted. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a farmer, like Andy. Like Dad. It’s just not me. I always wanted something different…something more. I don’t know. Nowhere’s ever felt…” He stops himself and feels heat rush to his face. It’s like his mouth is on fire, all the things he shouldn’t say. Has never said. He tries to turn around, make it into a joke, initiate sex again – his security. Aaron hasn’t fucked him for days and he’s good at it, better than he realises. He has this hidden talent of knowing just how to pace it, just how to touch him so lightly and turn him on. His nervous hands make Robert insane with hunger.

“Yeah,” Aaron says. His voice drifts away and he scoots up a little, almost as if he’s leaving more room for Robert to lie back down. Robert thinks he’s done talking, like he’s scared Aaron away with his honesty but he starts up again. “I don’t know what I wanna do.”

“You’re young.”

“So were you…you know, when you started your own business and stuff…” Aaron says, looking shy and self-conscious for a minute. “I haven’t really thought about it. The future. I don’t. Maybe I’ll…take over the garage.”

“You can do better than some poxy village garage,” Robert says, in a way that’s meant to be a compliment but sounds like a dig.

“We can’t all be Mark Zuckerburk – whatever his name is, mate.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –” Robert sinks back down beside him and places his hand flat on his chest. He shouldn’t like Aaron’s brutal honesty, that he’s unimpressed by Robert’s supposed success. But it makes it easy. It makes it easier that Aaron doesn’t care about, mocks, that image he projects. Because all that image is, is an illusion.

“How do you fancy getting away from it for a bit? A night?” Robert says, his thumb finding a pattern to smooth on the centre of Aaron’s chest. “Somewhere that doesn’t itch and smell. Away from Emmerdale.”

Aaron looks between Robert’s hand and then into his eyes.

It’s an escape, Robert tells himself. A distraction. A getaway from reality. That’s all.

“D’you fancy it?”  

 

 


	13. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron is full of excitement and nerves as he prepares for his secret night away with Robert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter this time around because...big things happen in the next chapter!

**Aaron**

It came out. The lie. Too easy and slippery, it just ran from his tongue. He even looked Paddy in the eye as he said it. He told him over breakfast as they shared the washing up (part of the deal with living here), told him he was staying with a mate overnight.

“Oh, oh. Okay,” Paddy had said and the relief slumped through Aaron. No interrogation meant as few lies as possible. But he wasn’t finished. “Which mate?”

Aaron’s head flicked back to a few days ago, in the barn with Robert. That golden, irresistible smile. Aaron needed convincing, gently. How were they both going to get away without it looking suspicious? Wouldn’t the hotel staff look at him weirdly, some nineteen year old in a hoodie and t-shirt? Robert had leaned in to kiss him, kissed the corner of his mouth and then climbed on top of him, angling his pelvis so their two bodies became joined again, humming in one thick pulse. He’d run his hands down the flank of Aaron’s body and eased back so Aaron had full view of his body, his taut chest still damp with sweat, his erect cock. _Don’t you want me?_ Robert teased. Aaron knew what he really meant, his gaze went there too. _Don’t you want this?_ He did, of course he did. He wanted it now, inside him, just like he’d want it overnight in a hotel bed fancier than any he’d dreamt of. _Maybe you can put a nice shirt on. A jacket? I bet you don’t look bad dressed up._ Robert said, teasing again, prodding at his sides and getting him to lift up his legs once he’d reached for the condoms. He came too fast and wish he hadn't, hoping if he had prolonged it then Robert might have stayed with him for another hour instead of putting his clothes back on and walking away.

“Just a mate,” Aaron said to Paddy without blinked. Shrugged his shoulders a bit and wiped a cloth around the rim of the cereal bowl.

“Oh,” said Paddy and then louder with more surprise. “Oh! One of _those_ mates. I see.”

“No, Paddy,” Aaron said. “ _Just_ a mate.”

“Not Adam, then?”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“I told you: a mate. A friend.”

Paddy had given up on the washing up, his fingers hanging loose in the water. “And this _friend_ , do they have a name? Or is it the friend you had over the other night?”

Matt. The name doesn’t even sound familiar in his memory, even though when his phone lit up with a text in the barn Robert was quick to ask if ‘that Matt loser’ was still trying to ask him out. Robert talked more about Matt than Aaron even thought about him. He hasn’t heard from Matt since he ditched him to sleep with Robert, yet he couldn’t help but let Robert think he had. Enjoyed the way Robert flared up like it was a competition. It wasn't like Robert had a leg to stand on, his phone was always ringing. Always. He never answered it. It wasn't just his girlfriend either. A stream of withheld numbers and a grey, distant look on Robert's face before he switched the phone off for good. But Aaron's text had rattled him too and he seemed to push his attention into that, jealousy fueled. He had rolled Aaron onto his front and told him to close his eyes. His voice was dark, the velvet timbre making Aaron swallow hard. With his eyes shut Robert was just a presence. A series of panting, half-murmurs and moans in his ear. Robert caressed his fingers down the nubs of his spine and then put his mouth there, and then down, further down. The tip of his tongue dipped between Aaron's cheeks. Aaron had only seen that in porn but now... _now_...

“Just someone else,” Aaron said. “Nothing like that.”

Except now, standing in front of his bedroom mirror in a shirt – white, ironed – and jacket – grey, slightly too long in the sleeves – he feels out of his depth, dressed for a court hearing and his stomach flipping like he’s up on a murder charge. Paddy’s downstairs, oblivious, and it’s going to be impossible to sneak out looking like this, even if he puts a coat on. The trail of aftershave (he used too much) is a dead giveaway too, but he got nervous and sloshed out too much of it in the bathroom. He feels a fraud. Stupid. Like a kid playing dress up. He looks in the mirror and doesn’t know who he is or why he’s doing this. What can a guy like Robert possibly see in him? How can he want to take him to a hotel for a night? It’s a risk, one that seems too short-sighted now he’s had time to think about it. In the barn, before, after and during sex it had seemed exciting to escape for a night. There was something wild about it, an adult feeling of adventure that fluttered in his gut. But now the reality of it is here, he’s uncertain. What if they got caught? It’s a growing possibility now that Robert’s girlfriend is opposite, just metres away in the pub. He doesn’t want to be a homewrecker.

But he wants Robert. So badly. It’s making him blind to everything else.

He tells Paddy he’s getting the bus and dashes out before Paddy can take a look at him. His heart rate surges through him like he’s made of electricity and wires and it’s joined by the rhythmic tapping of his wallet, the packet of gum and condoms (still too acutely shy to buy lube), against his chest from inside the jacket pocket as he runs down the street and out of the village. They’ve arranged a meeting place two miles out of the village and down a farm track, one they’d stopped the car down for a breathy session of hands and mouths on each other. Aaron attached a stupid sentimentality to it once Robert suggested they meet there and finds his way to it even in the dark down unlit roads.

He gets there with ten minutes to spare and no sign of Robert, but stands at the mouth of the track, blowing warm air into his cold fists. His thoughts have already travelled ahead to the hotel room Robert has booked – to a log-stocked fire burning away in reception when they arrive, white robes laid out for them at the end of the bed, crisp sheets and chocolate on the pillow. All his mental images are from TV. Cliché and cartoon. He can’t imagine his life in that world. Half of him wants to ring Robert and tell him to forget it, that they can stick to fumbles in the back of his car and Aaron can keep his secret wishes of Robert being his boyfriend unsaid and unexplored. But there in a hotel bed, he can pretend for a while. He can pretend things are uncomplicated, that there’s more to this than just sex. That he’s more to Robert than just a secret thrill. So he doesn’t call him. He waits. And waits.

Until it’s an hour after they’re supposed to meet and Robert still hasn’t shown.

*

He can’t face it. He can’t face walking back into the village and dodging Paddy’s questions. He can’t face trudging up the stairs and taking off the suit he put on earlier. He can’t face his own, empty bed. He can’t face any of it. There’s only one option.

He heads back to Emmerdale, takes a car from the garage he’s got the keys for – one the customer is picking up the next day – and drives out of the village, parking up somewhere isolated, a different farm track this time, and spends the night alone alternating between sleep, anger and crying. He hates Robert Sugden. And he hates himself. For getting his hopes up, for thinking he might be worth something. For the stupid clothes he put on and the excitement he had. For all his foolish fantasies about the hotel and how Robert might make him feel. For actually thinking someone might give a damn about him.  

In the morning, he rubs over his sore and sleep-crusted eyes, feeling the loathing wash over him again in rolling waves and punches the steering wheel until his hand hurts a little and he feels slightly better. He’ll never be this stupid again.

*

 

When he gets back to the village, after driving around for an hour or two, gaze piercing the window screen, he’s grateful of Paddy’s absence from the house. He sheds the clothes he chose for their night away, resenting them, resenting the way he’d felt at the sight of himself in the mirror. He’d felt good. He looked good. He wanted Robert to tell him that, run his hands across his chest and lean in, press his nose against the trembling pulse in his throat and kiss him. He wanted him to lead him to the bed, a bed that would feel like theirs for the night. A bed they could escape the rest of the world in. A bed where he wasn’t just some teenage mechanic from a boring village with a weird family of farmers. A bed where he was a man, made to feel like a man. Undressed and touched. He wanted to see that shirt and jacket on the floor of the hotel room and hear the empty silences and muffled noises from the corridor and the rooms next door. He wanted to pretend he was important for that one night. That he had found a sense of who he was, wrapped in the arms of someone who’d made him feel like no one else before.

It’s stupid. The worst feeling of all. Worse than feeling empty and lonely. Worse because he thinks he knows what he’s feeling, even if he can’t quite know if it’s true or not. Worse because it’s futile, unrequited. Worse because for the first time he’s feeling it and he can’t say it out loud. Worse because it hurts more than anyone warned him about. Worse because he’s fallen and it’s too late.

Even a scalding shower won’t clear his head and make it go away. He even goes for a run and feels the heavy thud thud of his soles on the ground and his bones clicking against each other. But it won’t go away, this feeling. This feeling he should never have felt in the first place. He knew the situation. He knew Robert was with someone else. He knew he’d never be more than a bit on the side.

He knew.

He knew.

And he still let it happen.

And not even a text or a call from Robert. Not an apology or an excuse. Nothing. Just absolute silence.

And then. A knock at the door.

And Robert on the doorstep, beaten, bloody and bruised.

 


	14. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert opens up after turning up beaten and bruised on Aaron's doorstep and realises there's a significance in the fact he went to Aaron before anyone else.

**Robert**

He should’ve expected it. Seen it coming. It had started with the emails and then the phone calls. The threatening texts in the middle of the night. He was late with the first loan repayment. Then the second. He didn’t have the spare cash for the repayment and nowhere near enough to cover the interest. He hadn’t read the terms properly of the loan before he agreed and then, after that, he started to notice the aggression building in the texts. Then voicemails. The frequency increased in a matter of days. But if he could hold out one more day, he thought, he could fix it. A little more tweaking of Camila’s books and he could free up some cash to pay them off. One more day. He had the hotel room all booked and paid for, promises made and a sleepless night of sex with Aaron would let him live for a little longer.

He dressed up, excitedly, putting his phone on silent and doing everything he could to shut down the thoughts of the debt collectors as he got ready. He hadn’t been as stupid as to give them his real address and that kind of creative lie telling was how he’d achieved his success in the first place. Things hadn’t gone that badly for him so far.

He lied to her face too and it felt like the easiest thing he’d ever done. He was stood at the mirror, correcting a crumple in his tie and Camila swerved up behind him, trying to tempt him to stay a little longer.

“You look too good for business,” she said, running her hands from around his back to his chest. “Who is she then, this other woman of yours?” She grinned, delighting in the joke of it all. It wouldn’t ever occur to her to think he was interested in anyone else. It made him hate himself just a little  bit harder. But he maintained the lie, sighing and furrowing his brow in a way that even convinced himself when he looked at his reflection. He really didn’t feel like driving halfway across the country for drinks tonight and meetings the next morning, he told her, but it had to be done.

“You’ll be bored tonight,” she said, resting her chin on his shoulder. “I could come with you, be that infamous clueless woman on your arm, while I whisper to you all the trade secrets they’ve let slip.” He loved her for her brains, her business savvy; it felt cruel that he’d been one of the few who had managed to fool her. She trusted him, she trusted him too much. And he abused that – _was_ abusing that.

And yet just as easy as it had been to invent the lie, he left her alone and headed to the hotel to meet up with Aaron. To align with his story, he left Camila earlier than he needed to, stopping off into Hotten to buy everything they needed. He even found himself stopping in front of an aftershave counter wondering if he could slip a box into Aaron’s bag or tease him with it, giving it as a late birthday present. But then he was touched on the arm by a shop assistant who tried talking to him about the base notes. His skin prickled thinking that hand on his shoulder was someone coming after him – someone from the texts and incessant emails – and he shook himself out of this reverie, dismissing the idea that he would ever buy Aaron a bottle of aftershave.

He had a little more time to kill before he needed to meet Aaron at the layby so he perched himself at the back of a coffee shop and ordered a large Americano, pre-occupied with his own imaginative thoughts about how the night might play out. He wondered how Aaron would feel turning up at a hotel as grand as Barden Park. According to its website it was up for an award, best in the county or something, and it certainly looked the part, especially the indulgently priced premier suite which Robert had booked for the night. Aaron was going to thank him big time for that, Robert could just tell. But there was something equally as exciting as the thought of seeing Aaron’s surprised face light up when he entered the room. It was going to have to be a room service job – fuck the price tag – he had no intention of leaving that bedroom for anything. 

His fingers trembled across his mobile phone screen when he saw the number of texts and missed calls and emails. He didn’t need to look to know who they were all from, which loan companies and shady contacts wanted his blood. It’d be sorted tomorrow. He only needed one more day. And he wasn’t going to spend that last day driving himself crazy with worry. He dialled the hotel and after the guy on reception failed to correctly identify his booking on the first go, he asked to speak to the manager – or someone with half a braincell – and inquired if they could arrange a surprise. Beer and a PlayStation set up in the room on arrival. Well, if they couldn’t arrange that in short notice they had no chance at winning that coveted award (and he made sure to tell them that).

He turned his phone off after that and headed back to the car. The layby was pretty easy to get to, whether you were coming from Hotten or from Emmerdale, but it was discreet too – a little slip of secrecy – and he was pretty sure that’s why Aaron had picked it. Robert remembered one time in the last few weeks that they had parked up there, just to get away from the village and find some sanctity in each other. Aaron had been eager, rushing, but Robert tried to slow him down, breaking from his heady combination of hands and mouth, to hold him – just slightly breathless – and enjoy looking at him. There was just something in his eyes…something in that low-pitched grumble of _“What?”_ that felt so freeing. That made Robert smile and say _“Nothing,”_ and then push his lips against him again and let things continue in the same frenzied pace.

He started on his journey to the layby, slowed at a junction and met with another car coming from the opposite direction. The rest is hazy. Everything happened too fast to process. They slowed, asked him for directions, all the time their heads tilted to one side, not really listening. There was no one else around, the roads were unlit, and all he remembered about the men was there were two of them and both had gruff southern accents. They wanted to stop and talk about his car; Robert was blinded, distracted by ego. And then something clicked, a stab of fear when they crowded around the car, wanting a closer look and called him – although he hadn’t introduced himself – _Mr Sugden_.

“I don’t know what happened next,” Robert says to Aaron, as he retells the evening having eased onto the sofa and winced at a rip of pain in his ribs.

“Fists and a good kicking by the looks of it,” Aaron says, his hard expression had melted somewhere between the doorway and the living room and now he leans in, timid fingers curling as he puts a shaky hand on Robert’s face and turns it to towards him to take a closer look at the bruising. Robert touches his fingers to Aaron’s.

He’d woken up from the beating some-way through the early hours and managed to stagger back to the main road and flag down a car to take him to A&E. He had no phone now, no cash, no car. They’d taken everything and left him for dead.

“How did you let it all get this bad?” There isn’t any accusation or blame in Aaron’s voice but Robert shrinks away in shame, avoiding Aaron’s touch and watching as Aaron’s hands and body retreat.

“It’s only money. It’ll sort itself out.”

“You’re kidding yourself.”

“So what if I am?” He shouldn’t have told him any of this. It poured out of him like the bruising and cuts opened him up and let it all rush out. He stands up, unsteady on his feet and clutching his side. “Of course you wouldn’t understand. What do you know? You’re just some kid mechanic!”

He sees a shard of anger glint in Aaron’s eyes as he stands up too, aggressively pushing out his chest. “Yeah right. I’m just some kid mechanic you just drop whenever you feel like it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you blaming me for being beaten up and left in a ditch all night?” Robert says. “I could’ve died!”

“If I’m just some kid, then what you doing here, eh Robert? Go on. Fuck off back to your girlfriend and that perfect life you keep telling everyone you’ve got. You know the one. The one you’re living with all your success and money. Go on back to that imaginary world.”

Robert can hardly see through the pain, but he manages to straighten upright and drag his glare into Aaron’s pierced expression. “Don’t you think if it was just that easy I’d have done it already? I’m trying to hold things together here.”

“Yeah and what a great job you’re doing.” Aaron folds his arms across his chest. Robert notices he has the swollen face of someone whose been crying. It hadn’t really occurred to him how Aaron must have felt last night, to be left waiting for hours. The damage of these lies are spreading like an infection he can’t control, spiralling.

“I can’t see you anymore,” Robert says. He doesn’t look at Aaron in that moment. His gaze flits around the room not concentrating on anything of importance, but he can feel Aaron shift beside him, his posture and breathing changing.

“Fine. It’s done.” Aaron nods.

It’s blunt. Hits Robert in the throat. He almost didn’t notice the loss of his phone, his wallet and car. But this. This is like the ground falling away. His arm reaches out and finds the edge of the sofa, holding onto its padded arm and pushes his weight onto it. Why _did_ he come here? It’s not like he expected Aaron to tend to him with a first aid kit. Tea and sympathy. That’s not what he wanted at all.

He came because he knew Aaron would ask why and he knew he’d have to tell him everything – about the collapsing business, the lies, the loans, the theft. He told him all and Aaron listened. He didn’t say a word, his expression didn’t change. Not even when Robert’s voice faltered and he thought he might…break…but that didn’t happen. Not when Robert admitted to stealing from Camila. He had said nothing, only _How are you going to fix it?_ And Robert didn’t have an answer, couldn’t even lie and bluff his way out of it. Somehow he just knew Aaron would see through it. And then Aaron had asked for the full story of the night before and he’d told him.

And now here they were. Honesty. Trying his hardest.

“Everything’s falling apart.”

“You could’ve tried being honest. That would have been a start,” Aaron says.

Robert scoffs. “I’d be a laughing stock. A big fat failure.”

“Why do you care so much about what everyone else thinks?”      

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Aaron shrugs and his arms unfold, replacing his tightly balled fists into his jogger pockets. He’s still handsome when all he is is a fury-ridden scowl hiding the softness underneath. He perches on the opposite arm of the sofa.

“I care what you think,” Robert says.

Aaron’s mouth twitches but he pulls it under control by biting at his lips.

“Even if you’re the only one who knows just how much of a failure I really am.”

Robert moves across the room, past Aaron, with the intention of getting to the door. But he feels the shift, Aaron’s fingers reach out and brush against his sleeve, stopping him in his path. How he wishes he could rewind last night, last week, last month. He wants to see that look on Aaron’s face as they enter the hotel suite; he wants never to even have considered the loans or the embezzlement; he wants to own up to Camila that his business has gone under, that he can’t afford the place in Madrid. He wants. He wants…

Their skin touches at the hand and then their mouths meet, tentative. Robert’s lip flares in a sharp pain but he lets that be overridden by the weight of Aaron against him as he pulls him closer, one hand on his waist and the other at the back of his neck. He feels Aaron sink and groan into it, easing his hands into positions he knows won’t hurt him. There’s a heaviness in Robert’s chest, familiar and unusual all at the same time, and when the kiss breaks he presses his forehead against Aaron’s and thinks he should say something – anything – to lift the tightness inside him, inside his head. But he doesn’t speak. Aaron does.

“You can’t…you need to sort your head out,” he says and that fist is there again, this time, pushing against Robert’s chest. Pushing him away. The pulse inside the fist says the same as his head: failure failure failure. “I’m part of the problem,” Aaron says.

“No,” Robert says, leaning in and snatching another kiss, one which Aaron is too weak to resist. Maybe, just maybe he can prove he’s not a failure. Not always, not at everything. He needs Aaron to know he’s more than just a string of lies and mistakes. He slips his hands under Aaron’s t-shirt, feeling the cool, taut skin of his stomach. “One last time,” he says. He knows it sounds like begging and he’s in too much pain to do anything, but he presses nose and mouth into Aaron’s skin and breathes him in, let’s Aaron take him away from the world he’s set fire to. He’s about to lose it all, this dream world, this fantasy. He’ll have to lie to make it work. He can never tell Camila the truth. So he’ll lie, and lie some more. And the new lie will overtake the old until his fantasy life is rebuilt again. He can do it. He has no other choice now.

He takes Aaron’s shirt off and kisses him again, harder. The sound they both make is raw, like an exposed nerve. Like an open flame making its first impact. He runs his hands down every shivered patch of Aaron’s body and feels the slight give, the slight slackness in his knees. He wants to go upstairs and just lay down next to him, not a lie spoken. Stay in their own unfiltered world.

But this won’t be one last time. That’s another lie. The final lie.

They shed more clothes and he feels Aaron’s urgency as they lean back into the sofa – him half-laying and Aaron sat and hovering, kneeling, in his underwear. Aaron doesn’t want Robert to change his mind, Robert realises. He thinks he’ll stick to his word – that this will never happen again.

They should go upstairs.

His head is swimming. Painkillers, anti-inflammatories. The numb and the sharp pains firing around his body. Aaron perches, propped up on his arms and straddled across Robert’s thigh. The kisses are awkward and uncomfortable but it feels like this will be his last experience of warmth, distraction and he’s going to cling to it. He’s not pretending with Aaron. That’s why he came here, that’s why he wants to be here and dreads going back across the road.

He touches Aaron’s cock through his underwear and watches bliss torpedo his eyes black. He knows this is the wrong thing to do, but he can’t stop himself. He’s falling. Fallen.

“Robert…” he says, his head turning, shaking ever so slightly. His hands rest flat on Robert’s chest. “I don’t think you’re a failure.”

Fallen.

Robert waits for Aaron to lean down again, for their mouths to meet. He runs his fingertips across the smooth skin of Aaron’s shoulder feeling like he imagined Aaron’s words but wanting to hear them again and again. He opens his mouth to suggest they go upstairs, to let this moment play out slower and in a more comfortable place – even if he can just about bear the discomfort – but then he hears the latch of the door, the clunk of the bolt and a jangling of keys. Robert’s whole body jumps and he’s crippled by the pain.

But it’s all too late.

Aaron scrambles for his clothes, mortified, and Paddy’s look of embarrassment and apologies only stop, in stuttered horror, when he realises who is laid out shirtless underneath Aaron.

 


	15. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron and Robert are forced to deal with the fallout of Paddy's discovery.

**Aaron**

“Paddy…”

The room is tight, like the air is starved and noiseless. Everything occurs in a slowed vacuum. Paddy just stands there in the doorway, vet’s bag slipping down his shoulder and then dropping onto the floor without anyone moving or reacting. Aaron’s arms are folded, fingers gripped by his armpits as if that will somehow distract from the sight of him – just in his underwear – and Robert reclined, shirtless on the sofa. Paddy’s sofa.

“No,” Paddy says, the word striking the air like a slap to the face. Aaron recoils from it as if the hit is physical. Then softer he says it again. “No. I’m going to go next door and make a drink and you’re going to put some clothes on and tell me what the hell is going on.” He looks at Robert. There’s a fury in that glance that Aaron’s never seen before. He didn’t know Paddy was capable of it. “And _you_ …”

Robert laughs, a flippant jittery sound that butterflies up from his chest when he sits, gathering up his shirt which is still crusted with blood. “Paddy, come on,” he says. “It’s not what you think.”

The anger compresses in his features, a purple-red exploding across his cheeks. “Don’t you _dare_ insult me in my house with your lies! Do you think I’m _stupid_?!”

“Paddy, please,” Aaron says, voice thick and throat trembling. “It’s not…” He finds himself repeating Robert’s excuses like a child, holding his t-shirt to his chest.

Paddy raises his hands in the air. Enough. “Put some clothes on,” he says.

The rest is the sound of fabric, fingers clicking over buttons, zips and denim, a belt buckle. They say nothing at first, unable to look at each other, but then Robert winces, the spread of bruises on his side stretching across his skin as he tries to pull on his shirt. The intake of breath makes Aaron look over. It’s a reflex. He wants to ask: _You alright?_ But he doesn’t and Robert speaks instead.

“He can’t say anything,” Robert says, eyeing the doorway which Paddy disappeared through. “If he says anything…” The menace is half-hearted, lost as he bends and grimaces at the pain of adjusting his shoes, tightening the laces.

“He won’t,” Aaron says, half-mumbled. He doesn’t know what Paddy will do. This is a new experience for him. It’s bad enough that he’s been caught like this for the first time, but in Paddy’s living room, with a guy whose girlfriend is staying across the road? Aaron isn’t even sure if _he’ll_ have a home after Paddy’s let him speak, let alone how he’ll react to Robert. It doesn’t look good, regardless of Robert’s history in the village (a reputation which hasn’t seemed to diminish in his years away) – he’s an older guy, definitely not single, and cheating with a freshly out, inexperienced nineteen year old. Aaron knows where this conversation will lead, with blame being directed squarely at Robert.

“If this comes out…” Robert says again, sounding desperate, hair and eyes wild, rather than the strained annoyance at Paddy’s arrival from earlier, as if this is somehow all his fault.

“It won’t,” Aaron says.

“It _can’t_ ,” Robert says. Aaron doesn’t need him to say anymore, he can feel it waiting behind his words – his insistence that he can’t lose Camila. Would she even want him if he owned up to what he’d done to her? Would he ever tell her? Aaron can’t help but resent that after all this, after all his deception, having been left for dead to cover his tracks, he’s doing all this to keep her and life he claims to want. He hates himself for thinking it, he hates himself for even letting it enter his head. _Why not me? Why can’t I be enough?_

But they’d agreed – and it is the right thing to do – that this would be the last time. Robert is messed up and sleeping with Aaron is only making things more complicated, more risky. Aaron wants to be selfish, wants the complications and the risks. But he’s only nineteen, he has nothing to lose. Except Robert. And he’s not even his to lose. Never has been.

Paddy stands in the doorway again, his jacket removed and his expression blank, cold. Robert rises to his feet.

“You’ve already made yourself at home so you might as well sit back down,” Paddy says and looks at Aaron without the familiar warmth. “You too.”

“I’m fine standing, thanks,” Robert says, pressing his hands deep into the well of his pockets. The bravado on him shakes, like a fractured shell.

“Fine,” Paddy says. “I think we’ve already established you’ll do what you want, to hell with anyone else’s feelings.” He steps into the centre of the room and Aaron’s focus falls on his own clasped hands, held out in front of him, as he sits, his leg jangling up and down. He’s too ashamed to look at Paddy.  

No one moves, no one speaks. The sounds from Main Street are magnified, a car passes, a dog barks. The sound of the kitchen clock seems closer than ever. Paddy’s digital watch beeps, the sign of a new hour and Robert shifts, picking up his folded jacket from the arm of the sofa with one hand held against his side to protect from a flinch of pain.

“I need to go,” he says.

Aaron looks up and then warily to Paddy.

“You can go,” – Paddy says – “once you’ve explained to me what’s going on.”

“Nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Paddy.”

They speak, almost at the same time, catch each other’s gaze and then snatch them away. Aaron picks at his fingernails, wishing he could explain in a way that didn’t make them both look like terrible, selfish people. But they are. Instead he sits, hearing Robert’s ‘nothing’ ring in his head.

“We were messing around,” Robert says, opening his hands like he’s just given a reasonable explanation.

“With your clothes off?”

Robert shrugs, his jaw hardened. He can’t explain it, shrug it off, but his expression is defiant. He needs this to be excused, brushed away as nothing.

Paddy looks at Aaron, the weight of it feeling like it’s dragging the energy out of Aaron’s body. “And this is the first time you’ve ‘messed around’, is it?”

“I’ve told you, it was nothing,” Robert says, but Paddy is still fixated on Aaron.

“I wasn’t asking _you_. I’m asking Aaron. I’m asking someone who might have the decency to tell me the truth.”

Aaron gets up, moves to bolt straight out of there and upstairs. Running is always easier. “I can’t –”

“Stay where you are,” Paddy says, putting up his hands. Aaron resists and Paddy’s voice softens. “I’m not going to get mad. I just want to know the truth.”

Paddy holds him at arm’s length and stares, stares until Aaron feels a tear, fat and wet, rolling over his chin. He inhales, wiping furiously at his face and shielding his emotion away from Robert and eventually lifts his head up high enough to shake from left to right.

“You’ve been carrying on with him?”

He nods.

“The whole time he’s been back here?”

Aaron shrinks again. “A while. A few months, I…I can’t remember when…”

For a moment he forgets Robert is even in the room with them until Paddy turns to face him. “You couldn’t just come back home to see your family for Christmas, could you? No, you had to start messing around with people’s lives again.”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

“It is my business when it’s happening in my house! When you’re a liar and a cheater and you’re using someone I care about for your own games.”

Robert scoffs, planting his hands on his hips. “I don’t have to listen to this,” he says. “I never lied and pretended that I was single. Aaron knew the situation, we both knew.”

“And your girlfriend, she knows does she? Knows where you’re sneaking off to? That you’re getting involved with a teenage lad? Or is that why you’re looking so black and blue today?”

“No,” Robert says. “And you’re not going to tell her either.”

Paddy’s chest pads out with a laugh. “Oh, threats now. Nice.”

“We’re over,” Robert says, and looks up at Aaron and the crackle of connection holds Aaron’s gaze. It’s a confirmation of things he already knew, but he feels it compress around his lungs all the same. He swallows, fights it down and tries to find a lie in Robert’s eyes, that he’s just telling Paddy what he wants to hear. That he won’t really go back to her for good, that this did mean _something_ , even if neither of them can quite say what that something is. “Aaron and me. It’s finished.” Robert looks away again and back to Paddy. To Aaron, Robert looks like a stranger again, not the man moments ago he’d never felt closer to. “So there’s no need to hurt anyone. Especially not her. She’s not done anything wrong.”

“Maybe she deserves to know what a lowlife you are.”

“Maybe she does,” Robert says. “But do you really want to be the one to break her heart.”

“I’m sure she’ll get over you eventually. No one’s that desperate.”

“And you telling her is going to achieve what exactly? What are you after? A pat on the back? She’s not going to thank you.”

“She might, eventually. When she sees you for what you really are.”

“Now who’s making threats?”

Aaron hates all this, the focus, the tension. He hates Robert’s dismissal and denial, the way she matters more, like she has always mattered more and he has tried to block it out.

“Please just…leave it, alright? Robert go home,” Aaron says, unable to look at him again and remind himself of this mess.

“I want him to promise to stay away,” Paddy says. “For good. I don’t ever want to see you near him.”

“I’m not a kid, Paddy,” Aaron says.

“No, you’re not. But if you’re living here then you could at least try and show me some respect!” He snaps and Aaron’s eyes blink against the tears building. Paddy looks at Robert again, not in truce but in compromise. “Well?”

“And you’ll keep it to yourself?”

“If you keep away.”

“I told you. It’s over.”

“Good. Then you can get out.”

Aaron screws up the hem of his t-shirt in his hands, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of his palm and wills himself not to look up, not to give Robert the satisfaction of watching him leave. But he can’t help himself. Their eyes meet and Aaron feels it again – that warm rush of electricity and insanity – and grips onto it tightly, knowing as Robert leaves the cottage he might never experience it again. The door clanks shut and with it the hollowness, the monochrome returns. He sits on the sofa, head in hands and waits for another grilling from Paddy.

But Paddy leaves the room, makes them both a drink and sits there opposite him, dwelling in the silence. It is somehow more painful being left to stew, to overthink, to imagine Robert going back to her, to imagine him selling her some story about being mugged, to feel him wiping Aaron from his existence like he was made to be forgotten about.

“I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry,” Paddy says eventually, when the tea is cool enough to drink but Aaron’s stomach isn’t strong enough for it. “I just want to know why.”

“I dunno,” he says, his shoulders shooting upwards. This is more uncomfortable than being caught, having to explain himself and the heady mix of feelings that are so closely entwined with Robert Sugden. “You told me to get out there…meet blokes.”

“I didn’t mean blokes like him!”

“I like,” – he hesitates, fighting himself – “I liked him.”

Paddy sighs, groans into his hands. “Him of all people! Why do you always have to make things so complicated for yourself?”

“It just happened.”

“He went after you?”

“No. It wasn’t like that,” Aaron says. It didn’t feel like that. It was as if Aaron had been blind to how he felt and Robert pulled him into a brilliant, white light. “I wanted him too.”

Paddy stares up at the ceiling, blinking as he tries to process. “You’ve only just come out, why couldn’t you have found someone…I don’t know – easy! Someone in a bar, someone understanding…”

“I wanted him.” _I still want him_.

He groans again, almost in disbelief. “Have you any idea the grief he caused his family when he lived here? How many people he upset?”

“Some of it.”

“And doesn’t that bother you? I mean – the man’s a born liar. And what, so, he’s gay now, is he?”

“It doesn’t matter now anyway, does it?” Aaron says. “You heard. It’s over.”

“Yeah, and I know you too well n’all. This isn’t the same for you as it is for him. You’ve got feelings for him. And you can deny it until you’re blue in the face, but I know you, Aaron. You’ve really gone and done it, haven’t you? You’ve fallen in love with him.”

_Yeah. He'd really gone and done it._

 

 

 


	16. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After leaving Paddy's, Robert has got some explaining of his own to do.

**Robert**

Robert’s pulse is still rattling around his bones. He stands in a No Man’s land ahead of the pub, skull pounding and every bruise and tear of skin as if it’s been set alight. He could retch, crawl to the carpark and get it all out of his system. The guilt, the lies, the everything. The feelings. But instead he stands numb, skin prickling with the cold and his thoughts still back in the cottage replaying the last hour.

He remembers it all. The warm tang of Aaron’s mouth, the thrum of his finger pads light and then possessive on his hip bones. He remembers feeling sore and then not knowing what he felt because the door opened and it was as if he was hovering above the scene, watching Paddy watching them and everything stopped. Sound drained from the room and all the while everything was loud and thumping in his head. He felt his father’s fingernails around his earlobe, tearing him away from something and the metallic taste of the blood from the night before. His father’s fist, the thugs from the night before – what did it matter when it all felt the same?

He couldn’t even look at Aaron, the cold white shock of it in his eyes. A small, crushed part of him recognised the feeling, the mortification, the confusion of being caught in the act. But Aaron was tougher than he’d ever been, braver too. How he wished things had transpired differently in the room, that he’d had the energy and the space in his head to think further ahead than his own misdemeanours unravelling. He couldn’t face the fall he had to take and he could face it even less if it were thrust upon him. Aaron had years, a youth and a Dingle brood to help him recover, Robert had none of that. If this came out, he’d lose so much.

It's hopeless, he realises. It had to stop; they’d agreed it should stop. But he wasn’t ready to end it then and he isn’t ready now. They say it’s less painful to rip away quickly, but it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels unfinished, the decision is out of his hands. He can’t have Paddy breathe a word, not when his life is shards as it is. Robert glances back at the cottage. He knows Paddy won’t say anything, he loves Aaron too much, wants to protect him – exposing their affair would be a betrayal of that.

Robert wonders how things might’ve gone if Paddy hadn’t walked in. How they might have laid there afterwards, skin cooling and breath settling.

“Thank you,” he might have said, taking his hand from the angular shape of Aaron’s hip and placing it around his face. He’s nineteen but already his face is lined, his smile weary in a way that makes Robert ache. Aaron always seems to have so much going on in his head, under the surface. It’s part of his appeal – that outer shell - and being the person to get underneath that.

“What for?” Aaron might’ve said back, shy, coy, resting his head on the sofa cushion and easing his limp and uncertain hand on the safe territory of Robert’s shoulder. It’s endearing how cautious he is afterwards, after everything they’ve done together. To each other.

“For understanding. For not hating me.” In Robert’s narrative, he looked into Aaron’s eyes and Aaron let him. Pure fantasy, but he lets himself visit the image like it’s a memory.

“We all make mistakes.”

The Aaron of this fantasy is wise, forgiving, props him up in the way he needs. Kisses him longer and harder and doesn’t mention Camila’s name.

He’s on the doorstep of the pub when he realises that in his delusional retelling of the aftermath, Camila hadn’t even entered his head. In his fantasy of Paddy not walking in and him and Aaron lying there, talking about mistakes and forgiveness, she wasn’t even a consideration. And yet, entering the pub, he feels reality swallow him whole.

She’s not home, Diane tells him, when he goes through to the back room of the pub. Diane’s making herself some lunch and doesn’t see the state of him straight away but when she does, one of her china plates with the floral pattern nearly falls out of her hand.

“What on earth?” she says. “What’s happened to you?”

He shrugs it off, feeling the sting of the cuts to his face smart. “You should see the other guy.”

“Did you get into a fight?” she says, rushing over to him, arms spread in that motherly way of wanting to take a closer look, dab him with a damp cloth. He resists.

“Worse,” he says. “But I’m fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just superficial. But I need to speak to Camila first, before anything else. Where’s she gone?”

“She left early,” Diane says. “She was off in a hurry somewhere. Always so busy with work that girl. I don’t know how you two ever make any time for each other.”

Robert smiles weakly and drags himself to one of the chairs perched around the dining table.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she says again. “Did you go to the police?”

“No. I told you, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing. It looks like serious bother, Robert. Don’t tell me you’ve been like this all night as well? Camila said you were away on business.”

He grimaces, thinking of that beautiful hotel room gone to waste, those hours misspent, that body untouched. “No,” he lies. “It happened this morning on my way home and then I took myself to A&E.”

“What are we going to do with you?” she says, mopping the top of his head with her hand like he’s just a boy.

They both hear the clatter of the back door and turn to see Camila bustling in, a bag, a laptop case and a takeaway coffee slowing her down. She sees the state of Robert and the guarded, concentrated expression on her face slides away as she approaches. Diane gets the hint for the need of their privacy and heads back to the front of the bar.

“Robert!” Camila says, his name extended into a gasp.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Well it looks terrible,” she says.

He expects her to come forward, to kiss and hold him, to cry. But it’s easier when she doesn’t. It’s like she must be able to sense there’s something wrong in the flinches of his face, his eyes moving back and forth as his brain ticks over. It’s harder than he expected it to be. Sifting between lies, reshaping truths. He thinks about how much harder it would have been had he not had Aaron. How that was an outpouring of grief and this was orchestration, designed and manipulated. It’s what he was good at, or at least, well-practiced in. He could do this. Without Aaron he’d have crumbled.  

“I’ve messed up,” he says, slumping into his open palms, breathing through them. These are only half exaggerations. “I’ve really messed up. And you’ll never forgive me.”

She places a hand on his knee. “Tell me.”

There’s something about her bluntness he’s always admired. She isn’t an easy woman to lie to, to cheat on. Perhaps the need to be extra careful to cover his tracks has always been part of the appeal. She’s smart and honest, always saying what she really means, never dressing up her words in the British way – with apologies or skirting around the issue.

“I’m in trouble. Money trouble,” he says, wiping his arm across tearless eyes and folding his hands together as if in prayer. “I’ve lost a lot of money – bad investment deals, stupid decisions. You name it. But I’ve done my best and I’ve tried to dig my way out of it. I took out a few loans. Borrowed too much from the wrong people and….well last night they caught up with me. This is about the state of it. They took everything I had on me - and my car - and dumped me at the side of the road.”

She lets her head fall down and with it, sheets of blonde hair mask her face. Her hands match his, stretch out in front of her and fingers clasped together. She says nothing and that makes his head seize and thump, the sound of blood pooling in his ears.

“Say something then,” Robert says.

“How long have you been in this money trouble?”

His bottom lip gapes open and shut, clamouring for a lie. “Not long, a few months. I told you – I’ve been trying to fix it myself. I didn’t want to worry you!” He reaches out to her, feeling her hand still slightly cool from the outside air.

“Months? And you didn’t tell me?”

He stammers, scoffs as if he’s mocking his own bad behaviour. “I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t handle it myself.”

Camila pushes her hair behind her ears. “But you couldn’t handle it yourself, could you Rob?”

“I know this looks bad, but it’s nothing. Really it’s nothing. I can get insurance on the car and I’m fine-”

“That’s not what I mean,” she says and looks up, straight into his eyes. He sees something in them, their dark and glassy appearance, that terrifies him. Like she can see into each of his secrets and is prising them apart.

“How long did you think you could hide it from me?” she says.

“What?” Robert feels the heat flood and drain from him all in a matter of seconds.

It’s as if someone has their grip on his throat. He checks for the tightness of his collar and feels it pull lose with his finger. The room is quiet, even the noises from the pub seem distant – detached. Camila’s gaze doesn’t falter, even when she has reached for her bag. Inside is a leather folder and she reaches her hand inside pulling out a wad of papers. He can’t quite see what’s on the pages, but there are areas of a data table ringed and highlighted. She pushes them closer to him so he can see what she’s looking at.

“I went to the bank this morning,” she says. “When were you going to tell me that you’ve stolen money from me?”  

 

 


	17. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paddy tries to prevent Aaron from seeing Robert, while Aaron agonises about getting in contact.

**Aaron**

It’s been three days. Three days measured by the amount of toast he’s made, burnt, abandoned. By the weather changes – wintery wet, wintery frosted. By the number of times Paddy has left a cup of tea on the threshold and said “You can’t keep telling Debbie you’re ill. You’re going to have to make out you’ve caught some deadly disease or she’ll start getting suspicious you’re not in work.”

He hates himself for being like this, to once again being reduced to the moping of a teenage girl – only with the added extra of blowing up zombies with machine guns until they’re just guts and splatterings while swigging away on cans of beer and making his thumbs red from the battering he’s given the PlayStation controller.

“Just look at the state of this place,” Paddy says on the third day when he gets back from a stables outside of Hotten. He makes a sweeping gesture at the coffee table where an orange greased pizza box sits open alongside a new and open pack of Strongbow. Aaron doesn’t even like cider all that much but he’d gone through the beer the two days prior and he didn’t feel like going to the pub for obvious reasons.

He’d already tried that and embarrassed himself. Entered the front of the pub half hopeful, eyes scanning the tables in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Robert. He hadn’t answered any calls and Aaron had reduced himself to leaving voicemails. Only two but even that mortified him. How could he say it in a voicemail when he wasn’t meant to say it at all? How could he say it out loud when he wasn’t sure what he should be saying if he didn’t know what he was feeling? Why was everything so fucking confusing and complicated? He wouldn’t if it would be the same if it was a woman he was chasing – a woman already attached to a wealthy bloke. Would he even stand a chance then in his trackies and trainers?

But there wasn’t any sign of him at the pub either and his mortification made his blushes feel violent and toxic in their heat. It was starting to feel like Robert was erasing him from his life. Maybe he should’ve expected that but it still hurt.

“You need to sort yourself out,” Paddy says, stepping in front of the screen just as he’s about to complete the next level.

Aaron curses, throwing down the controller and pointing at the screen. “For fuck’s sake, Paddy!”

“Oi! There’s no need for any of that.”

“I was in the middle of something!”

“Well at least I’m interrupting you when you’ve got your clothes on this time.”

Aaron flinches, gaze cast downwards. If only he’d not been as stupid. They should’ve gone upstairs and Paddy wouldn’t have found out and Robert wouldn’t have run scared. They might have stayed in bed for an hour or two, brains and bodies in sync. Robert wouldn’t have needed to say a word and Aaron would have laid out his palm on the atlas of bruising on Robert’s ribs and Robert would have known, just known, without Aaron even saying a word. Those impossible words.

“Oh when are you gonna listen? I told you: I’m sorry. Did you hear that yet?” Aaron knows he’s taking it out on Paddy and he is the last person to deserve it, but he can’t help himself, can’t stop it. He thinks back to a few days ago, ear pressed to the door to make sure Paddy isn’t lurking about his bedroom like a guard dog and him, shakily pressing the green call button. Robert’s voice on the inbox message making his insides hurt – clench and churn. His voice drilling him with the same combination of desire and annoyance all at once. He wanted to regret him, to hate him but he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

Message number one Aaron left was cooler, quieter. _Hi, It’s…well, it’s me. I just wanted to check…that everything’s okay after... I know things go outta hand but you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s sorted. I just wanted you to know that. That everything’s sorted._

Everything unsaid. He needed Robert to know Paddy wouldn’t say anything, that they were free to continue as they were, that he was worried about how Robert would handle his girlfriend’s reaction to the bruising and theft from his mugging. That he was worried about him, more than he should be but worried all the same.

His throat burned leaving the next message a day later, after another day of unanswered texts and a heavy ache in his chest. There was so much of him screaming for a release. He wanted to tell him he hated him. He wanted to tell him he…

_Well you’re not answering my texts so yeah you’ll probably just ignore this as well. I know I’m nothing to you. I don’t need the silent treatment to tell me that, do I? I just…What is your problem? You know what? I know what it’s like to lie. I know what it’s like to be scared. You’re not the only one, you know? But I ‘spose what would I know – cos I’m just a kid, right? That’s all I ever was to you, just some idiot to mess around with. It’s over, yeah?_

The rest came out with a shuddered sigh.

_I know it’s over. I just wanna see you. Five minutes._

He wanted to throw the phone out of the window once he’d ended the call, but instead he closed his fist around it, and kicked the wardrobe of his room until the wood dented. Paddy must have heard, or seen the damage but he didn’t say anything.

In the living room, with the bloodthirsty sounds of the PlayStation game still playing, hidden by Paddy’s frame, Aaron takes a glance at his phone. It lights up and his heart is gunfire under his ribs.

“No prizes for guessing who you’re hoping to text back,” Paddy says. “Wasting your time there, aren’t you?”

It’s Adam, suggesting a pint. Maybe he is wasting his time.

“What’s it any business of yours?”

“He’s a cheat and a liar, Aaron. Has been since he was your age and he’s still pulling the same stunts. He leaves a trail of broken hearts wherever he goes and now you’re the next one! I’m looking out for you.”

“Well don’t,” Aaron says. “I can fight my own battles. And I’m not heartbroken. Don’t be so stupid.” He spits the last part, like he doesn’t want it in his mouth, or anywhere near his thoughts.

“So that’s why you’ve been sulking in your room listening to moody music and getting drunk on your own, looking at your phone every five minutes?”

Aaron scoffs and stands, pocketing his phone and finishing off his can. “I told you it’s over.”

“But it isn’t over, is it?” Paddy says, stepping into his path and trying to still him with hands on his shoulders. “Not in here it’s not.” He points a raised figure to Aaron’s chest. Underneath it’s still raw, glistening in pain and unheard suffering.

“Get off,” Aaron says, shrugging him away and heading to the hall to get his coat. It’s as if the walls of the cottage are closing in on him, the hallway darkness choking down on him. He needs air, he needs to get out.

“I heard you the other night, leaving him a message. Telling him you want to see him.”

Aaron freezes. He can’t listen to this, he can’t have Paddy remind him of the stupid things he said. He hears the words he left amplified in his mind, embellished with things he didn’t say but could have if he’d been braver. Stupider. What kind of fool has he become?

“I can’t let you throw away your life on someone like him. You’re on your way to getting your head figured out and then Robert flipping Sugden comes along and you’re all over the place!”

“It’s not your choice to make, Paddy!” Aaron wrenches on his coat, pulling open the door and letting a wall of cold air rush between them.

“Please tell me you’re not going to see him.”

Aaron stares him down, shoulders stiffly defiant. “And what if I am? What you going to do? You can’t just lock me in here like some sort of prisoner.”

He hadn’t planned on tracking Robert down, but now that Paddy’s put the idea in his head, he knows he can’t mope forever. It had seemed too desperate to chase after him, but how else is he going to get answers when Robert won’t even answer his phone? If he could only see him, speak to him…

“No,” Paddy says, edging closer to the doorway as some kind of block. “But I can tell your mum. See what she has to say about it.”

“You what?”

Aaron slams the door shut again, the rattle of it reverberating through their skin. He sees a look of fear shudder into the blacks of Paddy’s eyes.

“Are you threatening me?” Aaron says. He’s too riled, all shoulders and chest, to see Paddy fold, step back against the wall.

“No,” he says. “But someone’s got to make you see sense.”

“All I’m seeing is you trying to trap me here and if I don’t dance to your little tune you’ll run off and tell my mum!”

“Look. Just calm yourself down. You’ve taken out your temper on enough furniture round here and I don’t want to see your fist through the wall again.”

“If you tell her, that’s me gone. That’s me never coming back. You understand me?”

“Listen to what you’re saying. No bloke is worth this. No bloke is worth running out on the people that love you and who are trying to protect you.”

“I’m not doing it because of him!”

“So it’s not because you’re worried that if I tell Chas, she’ll scare him off forever and you’ll never get to tell him how you feel?”

“How I feel?! Paddy – are you on the crazy pills?”

“Well, how do you feel about him, then? Because if you’re not in love with him then why are you torturing yourself like this?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not what? Not torturing yourself, or you’re not in love with him?”

“I’m not any of it.”

“Because if you are – in love with him – and I think we both know you are, then you’re going to have to cut yourself off from him. And I mean right off.”

By now Aaron’s temper has simmered and he slumps to the ground, back against the wall, knees wedged under his chin.

“It doesn’t matter anymore anyway,” Aaron says. “He’s obviously made up his mind. I haven’t heard from him since he left here. Nothing.”

Paddy doesn’t need to say it, doesn’t need to make the noise that says: _I told you so_. Instead he presses his lips together and moves closer to Aaron, and groans as he sits down beside him.

“Perhaps it’s for the best,” Paddy says. “I know it hurts, but in the long run…”

“Yeah well that’s easy to say now.”

“It’s easy because it’s true. He’s done a lot of damage to people in the past. You only have to ask Andy. Katie. Your mum knows more of the gory details than I do, but it wasn’t exactly pretty. And now he’s cheating on this other poor girl and dragging you into it too without a second thought. Look, he might seem like a catch right now to you, but there will be other blokes out there who are better for you. Nice blokes, ones that’ll treat you right.”

“’ _A catch_ ’ – where are you from, the fifties?”

Paddy laughs him off and then his hands come out in front of him, gesturing in a way that bridges the gap between Paddy’s silence and then stuttering. “All I’m saying…is that he might have his appeal when it comes to….when it comes to…you know. And you’re a young bloke and you’ve got certain…well…I mean…certain _needs_ but…”

“Agh! Stop! Please just…”

They share a laugh. The easiest, most natural relief Aaron’s felt in a while. And the grief fights back harder and hits the back of his throat in a way that makes tears itch at the edges of his eyes.

“He doesn’t want me,” he says, resisting the squeeze on his voice.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” Paddy says. Aaron doesn’t hear it.

*

Later, when it’s got dark and the hum of the television is a low crackle and Paddy leaves it on while he washes up, Aaron heads upstairs, exhausted. He agreed to stay away and he intends to keep the promise now, deleting all his saved texts from Robert (the few he had), but can’t bring himself to erase his number. It feels too final, even though he’s already promised Paddy he won’t go back there and he won’t live on hope anymore. He knows how pointless it is. He knows.

He gets ready for bed – or to lay in bed and not sleep – and thinks about how things might have transpired if he’d taken Robert upstairs that day. It’s something he can’t stop returning to, no matter how much it hurts him.

_“You look a million miles away,” Robert says, fingertips in light circles on Aaron’s forearm. It’s ticklish but he doesn’t mind. Better than his waist, which Robert has recently discovered is his weak spot._

_“Nah…I just…” Aaron says, conscious of Robert’s tremoring pulse, the flex of his muscles with his arms around Aaron’s body. “I like laying here.”_

_They kiss, Robert turning Aaron’s face towards him and smiling into it. He’s still transfixing, unnervingly handsome, even with bruising and a cut to his face. He runs his finger along Aaron’s jaw when the kiss has stilled and their foreheads rest, shadowed by each other._

_“You were wrong before,” Robert says. Aaron holds his breath, watching the beat-beat-beat of Robert’s eyelashes as he pauses and speaks. “I care about you. I really care.”_

And that’s as far as Aaron lets his fantasy continue. It’s enough torture for the night. He won’t kid himself with any other platitudes Robert might’ve said, even if it felt so close, so real he could taste it.

He stands at his bedroom window, ready to close the curtains on the night, on the village, on another lonely day. And then he sees them, on the steps of The Woolpack, him with his hand on her shoulder, leaning in to kiss her cheek before he follows her inside.

Aaron’s heart is scrubbed out of existence.  

 

 


	18. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert tries to be honest to make up for the mistakes of the past, but it doesn't come easily when he realises the biggest lie is the one he's telling to himself.

**Robert**

She pours herself a glass of water when they reach the back room of the pub and he tries placing his hands on her shoulders, but he watches her hands tense, fingers stretch and then she moves away from him, hands still raised.

“I can’t,” she says. “Not yet. I can’t just pretend everything’s fine.”

“Okay,” he says, voice half the volume of hers. “Okay. I’ll back off. I’m sorry.”

“It’s hard enough as it is to play nice in front of everyone. To keep pretending in front of your family. But I can’t just forget, Robert.”

“I know.”

Days ago, though it felt like weeks, they’d sat in the back room of the pub and he’d told her everything. About his business crumbling, about the contacts fleeing a sinking ship, about his efforts and failures to re-cooperate the money.

“So you thought what? I’ll steal from my girlfriend?”

Her eyes were the colour of a storm, dark and stripped of all warmth. Her neat little hands were in her lap in fists and Robert could hardly bring himself to look at her fully. But she was leaning in, trying to snap back his focus with her voice.

“It wasn’t planned. And it wasn’t forever. I was going to put the money back, all of it. I swear”

“And just hope I wouldn’t notice?” She slapped her hands against her legs. “More lies!” she said. “Will you ever stop lying to me?”

He wanted to look into her eyes, hold her delicate hands in his and tell her it would and that he’d change. Because that was the right thing to do, to be honest and promise her the truth. He owed her that at least. He wanted to tell her that she was his world, that she was everything he had ever wanted. That he loved her and would do whatever it took to make her trust him again, make her love him again. But he could hear the words in his head. Rattling, clanging against empty space, empty promises. His flesh, his blood, felt other things. When she confronted him about the embezzlement it wasn’t guilt that rushed through him first after that initial hot panic where he stammered to find a believable and false explanation, but relief. Like shedding skin. He’d worn the lie for so long he’d felt old from it and now what was left was this rawness, this unfiltered version he’d never revealed to her. But there was longing underneath that tired skin. A longing to be honest in a way he’d never been, to be himself and free from the expectation and impressions other had of him. And ultimately, though he wasn’t ready to think too long on it, a longing for another chance, another life, another future. One that was difficult but at times felt so easy.

Aaron. That’s where the ache came from. That’s where the mess and the conflict and the confusion came from. Him. How long had it been _him_?

Long enough to for Robert to know what he was avoiding and why. Because knowing it, acknowledging it, would lead to decisions he wasn’t equipped to deal with. He was a man who had always taken the easy route – the lies where the truth would hurt, the lies when they’d get him what he wanted. Honesty was difficult.

She must have seen a look across his face then, because Robert watched Camila’s fists uncurl and her fingers dabbing at the creases of her eyes. “How could you do this to me?” she said. “To us?”

He thought of the future they were meant to have. The one everyone expected from him.

And he leaned into her, crouched on the floor and touched her shoulder, resisting the way she tried to push him off.

“No more lies,” he said. “I swear to you. No more.” He hadn’t told her that all this was an effort to prove himself, to not be a disappointment. She couldn’t know he’d stooped like this as just a pathetic way to cling onto a version of himself that didn’t ring true. How could he open himself that much and make it through the other side? She wouldn’t want him if she knew all of his flaws. Who would?

But he couldn’t swear no lies, not really.

Every thought is a lie. Every empty thump of his heart when he told her again and again that he loved her and that he was sorry. He couldn’t swear it then and he can’t swear it now. Because the biggest lie is the one he’s telling himself. The one that says he can do this, he can live like this.

In the backroom of the pub, days after he’s sworn to her, she’s still distant, unable to meet his eyes once she has drunk her glass of water and rinsed it again. He tries to open his mouth to try again, like he has done for days, but she told him it would take time.

She surprises him by speaking first. “I need to know you’re willing to do whatever it takes. If you want us to move past this.” She makes it clear she’s not ready for him to speak yet by raising her hands again and taking a step back when he moves forward. “I shouldn’t forgive you. I shouldn’t even speak to you,” she says. “I should report you to the police.”

“I’ll do anything,” he says. Because what else is there to say now?

“We need a fresh start,” she says. “Not here. Not where everyone thinks you are the prodigal son with the perfect life. We start again. Move away. A different city than before. I will have to lie to the people I love to save me from the embarrassment, but I cannot return to our home and play that everything is just fine with us. I can’t. I can’t do it.”

“Okay. Wherever you want. We’ll do it.”

“And you will work for me,” she says. “No bullshit excuses. You will repay me everything you owe. I don’t care about your pride, Robert. You owe me. You owe me your pride too.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “I don’t care about that. Whatever it takes.”

“It’s the least you owe me,” Camila says. Her face is fixed with a coldness he’s never seen before. He’s driven her to this and he feels it eating away at the hollow inside of him. “I had our whole future planned, Robert. I thought we both had. I thought we wanted the same things.”

“We did! We do.”

“I know you’re better than what you have become. I know you. I know this isn’t you.”

His head hangs, lost in the barrage of her words. He watches Camila look around the room, her eyes stopping at every photograph she sees.

“Ever since you’ve been back here…something’s been different. Something’s changed.”

Robert swallows, his ribs closing in on him, suddenly losing the ability to breathe. Like she knows even though she can’t possibly.

“Maybe it’s a regression or…I don’t know. But I feel like I’ve lost you…I’m losing you. To this place! What is it about this place! You tell me nothing about your family and then you stay here and it’s lies and lies and lies. And the disappearing all the time.”

“I’m sorry. Please! I’m sorry.”

“It brings out the worst in you,” she says and they’re both crying now. Hers thin and moon-shaped tears along the edges of her eyes and his, hot and stinging, his throat swelling.

He knows he’s nodding, though he can’t really admit to what this place does to him, what it means to him – now more than ever. What he’s run from, what he is and what he’s become. For so long it’s not been home, even when it should have been and now…now…

Through her tears, Camila has leaned forward against him, touching his cheek as he nods with her, agreeing that this village is the very thing that’s come between them, even though he knows it’s not true. The only thing that’s come between them is him, who he is. And _him_. Over the road and never, never out of his head. Him who has ruined everything and _him_ who started the fire.

Camila presses her mouth to his and he tastes the salt from her cheeks. They kiss and she kisses back harder, trying to find the man she thought she knew, the man she thought she had a future with. And he kisses her like he’s still that man and still wants to be that man. He can try, can’t he? He can try.

And she takes his hand and leads him upstairs, on the promise they’ll leave first thing in the morning.

*

She’s asleep, curled and facing him for first time in days. He sits up and looks down on her, trying to think of things he once thought about her. How he might have kissed her bare shoulders to stir her awake, how he might have combed the hair from her face or whispered compliments against her earlobe even though she was in a dream world.

He doesn’t do any of these things.

His head is still fogged, stomach still lurching from the dream he’s just woken from. It was supposed to be euphoria after sex, to shut his eyes and doze. But once they’d finished and his eyes slipped shut, he was back on the farm again, falling from dream to dream, age to age.

His dad was in all of them, that same eternal presence, the same placid look on his face, the same outfit, the same levelled voice. But it wasn’t just them on the farm. There was a light touch on his arm, fingers brushing back and forth. His dad nodded and Robert’s face turned to see who it was beside him, tucked at his side. His body knew who it would be, his head too, but he turned and looked anyway. Aaron. Sullen, quiet like always. Half a smile then, directed at Robert, lips curling up and then fought against. His thumb touching and then tearing apart. And then he slipped away again, disappeared, just like that. And Robert fell into another dream. A roadside. Smoke, blood under his nose, getting into the driver’s seat of a car. Max, dead already. Andy screaming at him. His dad’s voice stopping him. But he didn’t say what he was meant to say. He didn’t say the words he actually said all those years ago.

 _“Robert, I love you_ ,” his dad said.

The words come back to him from the dark corners of his dream and Robert pulls the bedcovers off his chest, trying to fill his lungs with air he cannot reach. He pulls his head into his hands and claws at the skin, feeling the heavy press of the bedroom weigh down him. How can he leave this place again? How can he go?

He does what comes naturally, his hands trembling as he locates his phone and switches it on, seeing the number of voicemails and unanswered text rise. But the date stamps tell him that Aaron’s stopped trying.

His fingers jitter across the screen, losing focus and almost dropping the phone.

 _I’m sorry_ – he types – _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. I -_

Camila puts a hand on his back. And now the phone screen is blank. Sent or not sent, he doesn’t know anymore. Did he finish the message? Did he say it?

“We need to hurry up and get packed,” she says. “We need to leave for the airport before 10am.”

It feels like forever. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak. He can’t. He hears her get up and move around the room, putting on fresh clothes and beginning to pack. She’s already left in her mind. She hasn’t noticed him, paralysed on the bed and staring at his phone.

“I can’t,” he says.

She doesn’t hear him at first, facing him and scooping up her hair.

“I can’t. I can’t leave.” He’s staring straight ahead, like she’s not even there. “And…I know I should. And a part of me wants to. I want to…but I can’t. I really really can’t.”

“Robert? What are you…? I don’t believe this!”

“There’s something else,” he says. “Something else I need to tell you.”

But before he can look her in the eye, before there’s a shift between them and the uncomfortable silence drags into another minute, there’s a scream from downstairs. The sound of a shattering glass. It’s Diane.

Robert pulls on clothes and Camila tears down the stairs before him, already offering Diane comfort before he makes it down there. Her face is a sickly shade of white, her arms shaking as she tries to explain. All he can get out of her is that he needs to call the police.

“It’s the bar,” Camila says, when they’ve made sense of what Diane is trying to say. “Something to do with the bar.”

Robert tells her to keep Diane out the back, sit her down and make her a cup of tea while he investigates. He can hear Camila calling the police already and his whole body tenses at the thought of what might be the other side of the door.

There’s no need to turn on the light, Diane already did that before the scream. He side-steps the broken mug of tea and the brown spill on the floor and easies towards the bar area, breath held. There’s glass everywhere, shards and shards of it like an ice palace. Glasses, bottles, green and brown glass shooting rainbows across the tables and floor. He’s wary of where he’s putting his feet and he keeps glancing down between movements. There’s no sign of a forced entry, the door’s in-tract – and the windows – and the till hasn’t been opened.

And then, on the far wall, past where photos of the dead hang in judgement and remembrance, he sees a word sprayed across the wallpaper.

LIAR.

 

 


	19. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron suffers after seeing Robert cosy and back with his girlfriend. And when the pub vandal is revealed, Aaron has a tough decision to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to make a huge apology for being the worst writer ever in the delay it took to write this chapter. Anyone who follows me on tumblr (memorieswarm) will know the highs and lows of the on screen canon distracted me from and lowered my motivation to write. If you're still reading this then thank you so much for your kindness and patience. There are four chapters left and I promise there won't be a delay like there was with this one.

**Aaron**

The bullet takes the eyes clean out. One to the brain for extra measure. The next two soldiers emerging from the bunkers are dead in an instant. Three shots, done. Reload. His hand begins to sting where the controller is pushed up against the bandage and he pauses the game to readjust the wrap of gauze and pull his sleeve down over the evidence. Blood is dried to a rust brown on the folds of the bandage. He loses the next level and throws the controller across the room, knocking a photo frame off the shelf and shattering the glass. Just looking at it he feels the familiar sensation, of broken glass against skin, and he crouches to collect it and hide the destruction before Paddy gets home.

He hasn’t seen him since last night, since another argument left the front door shuddering in its frame and his fists coiled, tight and veined. He never means to take it out on Paddy and yet they always find themselves here. Frosty, strained. The worst of it is, Aaron knows his words stung because they were true and they’d always been true. He’d just managed to blunt them, to push them aside, because lust and the foggy beginnings of something that felt like love seemed to be stronger than truth.

Last night. Last night after he’d laid in bed, replaying snatched moments with Robert, retracing shapes of his body, curves of his lips over and over in his head. In the dark, drifting under a light sleep, fantasy and memory fused until the fantasy breathed into life, making his need and want feel as real as flesh. He could hear the words he wanted to hear from Robert right in the dark well of his ear, he could feel promises pressed into his skin.

And then he got up out of bed and saw headlights across the road, a car pulling in. Robert. Robert and the woman he was lying to, the woman he was kidding himself with. Aaron had never felt an emotion so raw as jealousy, the brute of it hacking away at his insides and all those delusions he’d had, the hope that Robert might look into his eyes and tell him he loved him. He saw an intimacy between them, taunting him in the pitch black. He saw Robert touch the dip of her spine, lean in and kiss her gently. He saw them enter the pub and the rest – the imagined progression of their evening, clothes shed, words and bodies tangled in a closeness he was denied – played out in colour in Aaron’s head. She’d taken him back, forgiven him everything and all the promises Aaron had wanted for himself, Robert had given her instead.

Aaron couldn’t stand it in his bedroom any longer, locked in by his own thoughts. He went to the kitchen, clattering round in the fridge and pulling out a six pack – one he’d bought earlier and Paddy had tried to confiscate. He didn’t know how much time passed between then and raiding Paddy’s hidden drinks cabinet, but he was pouring neat vodka when Paddy came down the stairs and found him.

He flicked the light on, adjusting his glasses, his face pink with anger.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Having a drink. What does it look like?” Aaron said, his words slurred with alcohol and emotion. He didn’t even care that it was obvious to Paddy he’d been crying. It was all over his face, his sleeve. He took a swig straight from the bottle and winced, falling back into the sofa when Paddy snatched it off him.

“At three in the flipping morning!” Paddy cried. “Get upstairs. Get yourself to bed.”

“Who do you think you are? I’m not a kid.”

“You’re behaving like one! Look at the state you’re in. You’re a mess.”

“I don’t care,” Aaron said, feeling a fresh wave of tears hitting him and disproving his every word against Paddy’s accusations. He snapped. “You know if you hadn’t walked in and…and told him to stay away…”

“Oh _please_!” Paddy said. “This is about that spineless little twerp again? When are you going to wake up, Aaron?”

It struck Aaron then, that in any other situation Paddy, half-dressed in a R2D2 t-shirt and striped boxers and red faced from shouting, would have made him laugh. But there was a different side to Paddy emerging now that he hadn’t seen before. Gone was the softly-softly approach and the frustration, the hatred of Robert. There was something else in his reaction now, something that stung.

“You’re eighteen. What did you really think was going to happen? That he was going to give up his girlfriend, his home, his job for you?”

Hearing it out loud from a man like Paddy, a man whose unconditional love had seen the worst of him, hurt more than ever acknowledging the reality amongst his own thoughts. The tears that spilled became wilder, heavier.

“I’m sorry, Aaron. But someone has to say it. Robert is a cheat and liar. He’s never changed and he never will. You won’t be the first and you definitely won’t be the last but you’re a fool for being taken in by his constant lies.”

He felt like one. He thought of the kiss he’d seen out of the window, a confirmation that it had all been nothing to him, that Aaron had been nothing. Paddy was right and he had been all along. He should have listened to his warnings. Aaron took another swig from the vodka bottle and stood, pushing past Paddy and out into the night. Out towards the pub.

*

Aaron’s on his knees sweeping the shards of glass from the photo frame into a dustpan when Paddy arrives home. He shuffles around in the kitchen, unloading shopping bags for a while until he steps into the living room, cautiously, almost as if the whole floor is covered in broken glass and his feet are bare.

“What’s happened here?” he asks, his voice is different from the anger and the severity of the previous night.

“Nothing,” Aaron says. “Just a photo frame. It was an accident.”

“Okay.”

Aaron watches as Paddy glances down and spots the bandage. Aaron’s quick to pull his sleeve to cover it but not quick enough. Paddy presses his lips together. He’s not going to mention it now, not just yet.

“What time did you get home last night after you…well after you stormed out?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I am sorry you know, for being so harsh with you,” Paddy says, but his words still sounding clipped. Wary. “But I only do it because I love you and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I know.”

“So you’ll understand why I’m about to say what I’m about to say.”

Aaron feels the sting on his hand intensify. He should have been more careless but a shard had caught him unawares.

“Because I’ve just been by the pub. And Diane’s outside, crying. I think it’s in anger mostly. She’s not hurt or anything.” Paddy stumbles around his words like he’s trying to delay the point. “But there’s police there too. And I want you to be honest with me, Aaron. Because I think you know why Diane’s in a state and why the police are outside the pub. Don’t you?”

Aaron begins sweeping the floor again with the brush even though all the fragments of glass are in the pan.

“Don’t you?” Paddy repeats, firmer. He steps closer. “Stop. Just stop. Leave that alone.”

Aaron does what he says and rises to his feet. He can’t look at Paddy.

“The bandage,” Paddy says. “How did you cut yourself?” A long, drawn-out pause beats between them. “You vandalised the pub, didn’t you?”

Aaron raises his head and with one look, one single look, he knows he’s told Paddy everything. Drunk and distraught he’d broken in – a dodgy lock on the front door, Victoria had told him enough times that they were lucky no one knew – and then he began smashing glasses and bottles behind the bar. Not enough to wake anyone but enough to know it would be noticed, would cover tables and the floor with broken pieces. And then spray paint, a can of the stuff he found in his old hiding place in Paddy’s garden and on the walls he told Robert what he really thought of him.

“Aaron you idiot!” Paddy says. His hands fly to his face even though he knew the answer already. His fingers push into his skull. “What were you thinking?!”

“I wasn’t,” Aaron says, eyes filling. “I just wanted to get back at him. For using me. For not...”

Paddy’s sighs are full of regret, disappointment. Frustration. Aaron curls fists against his face, hating himself for all of this mess. Paddy’s hand rests against his shoulder and at first Aaron resists it until he realises he’s not strong enough to go this alone any more.

“He’s worth all this is he? There’ll be your blood at the scene of the crime. If they find it, that’s you going down for it. And he’s worth facing prison for is he?”

“I’m not going to hand myself in!”

“You don’t exactly have much choice, Aaron.” Paddy sits on the back of the sofa, just resting. “If you go to the station and hand yourself in, chances are they’ll be more lenient. Say we had a falling out and you were angry at me if you have to. Keep Robert out of it if that makes it easier. But do that, and you’ll probably get community service if Diane presses charges. But if you don’t hand yourself in and they have to come looking...it’s only going to look worse on you.”

Aaron closes his eyes, breathing in through the hands that mask his face. “What have I done?”

“We’ve all done stupid things for love,” Paddy says. “I’m sure your mum’s got a few stories to tell.”

“He doesn’t love me back, Paddy,” Aaron says, sadness thickening in his throat.

Paddy shakes his head. “So you’ve got to decide. Are you going to sit here and hide? Get convicted for the likes of him. Or are you going to grow up and own up to it and hand yourself in?”

 

 


	20. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert paces the room, desperate to explain why he can't leave Emmerdale, but with Diane struggling to understand why anyone would trash the pub and Camila itching to leave, Robert is trapped in his own conflict. With 'LIAR' still sprayed on the pub's walls, there's only one person he needs to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being so sweet and supportive <3

**Robert**

They’re in the backroom of the pub again, Camila stirring sugar into Diane’s second cup of tea even though Robert knows she can’t bear sweet tea, not even in shock. She’s too nice to say anything to Camila right now. Robert paces the floor behind the sofa, head pushed down towards the ground and shoulders hunched. The women replay the night before in their conversation, but Robert’s stuck in the morning, before they heard Diane’s scream. Before his feet crunched on broken glass and he saw himself for what he is, emblazoned on the pub walls in red. Except that’s not who he is. Once maybe but not now, not anymore.

His thoughts return to the borrowed room upstairs, to his mobile phone in his hand and Camila’s voice stripped of the syrupy softness of morning. _“I don’t believe this!”_ she’d said because he’d told her couldn’t leave. How could he? And it had been there, biting away at his tongue. The reasons why he couldn’t get on a plane and feel the concept of home shrink and vanish from his grasp.

 _There’s something else. Something else I need to tell you_.

Other thoughts taunt him, an in-fight of conflict that this interruption from Diane is a vehicle for his cowardice, an easy ride away from the truth. _You’d never have got the words out. You’d never tell her._ But the thought of packing up his things and driving away sickens him more than the courage tightly encased inside his chest. The tension of it ripples up to the surface, causing storming footsteps and hands ravaging through his hair. Diane’s head lifts and he sees her catch sight of his agitation, his whole body screaming. He burns with words unsaid, words that were so close to the surface they can barely be buried again. After a lifetime of burying, he can’t stand it any longer.

“I know you’re angry, love, but you need to calm down. Here, just sit, will you?”

She’s calmer, soothing and motherly in a way he can’t handle right now. He looks at Camila, her hand on Diane’s, but her face turned towards him with a compassion he doesn’t deserve. He has to break a heart to keep hold of his own; sympathy and tea is the last thing he can stomach.

“I’m fine where I am,” he says.

“You’ll wear a hole in my carpet,” she says, trying to lighten the mode. “Maybe the place can have a complete make over now.”

Camila rises upright and moves towards Robert, making his skin more jittery but his body come to a standstill. “You don’t think this…is from the same people who attacked you?” she says. Diane doesn’t know the full story of course, about the debt and the real reason behind his blood and bruises, so Camila keeps it vague.

He shakes his head. “No they got everything they wanted from me last time.”

“Are you sure?” Diane says. “I just don’t understand it! It’s mindless.” She’s been stewing in her anger and it comes out now, her fist hitting the surface of the circular table. “They didn’t take a penny. Just littered the place and – ‘ _LIAR’_. What does that even mean?”

“It could be anything,” Camila says. “Kids. Who knows what their purpose is. Just to scare us maybe.”

Robert notices a subtle shift in Camila’s attitude. Not dismissive or rude to Diane, but her gaze passes over her wrist watch and with it, her comfort of Diane is on a time limit. She looks directly at Robert then as if wanting him to pick up on the signs too. Time to go, her look says. Time to placate your stepmother and get out of this village, this country forever. She touches his arm but he pulls away.

“What did the police say?” Robert asks, moving away from Camila and widening every distance between them.

“Oh the usual,” Diane says, sighing. “It’s not like this is the first break in. I know the drill by now. It just makes me so mad and I hate that feeling, you know? That I’m not safe in my own home.”

“Maybe you should think about getting CCTV,” Camila says, another short statement to close up the conversation. “You could even get sensors to trigger an alarm,” she says.

“Do you think they’ve been watching the whole time?” Diane says. “Goodness knows what the insurance company is going to do considering there was no signs of a break in. To think Victoria and I used to joke about the dodgy front door.”

“Where is she anyway?”

“At Butler’s,” Diane says. “She was staying with Hannah last night and I rang her and told her what happened and just to stay there. She doesn’t half get herself into a state worrying does your sister.”

Robert rubs his hand over Diane’s shoulder and she stills his movement by placing her hand on top of his.

“I’m glad you’re here though, pet. It’s nice to have a strapping young man around the house.”

“Not that I was any good to you last night,” Robert says and he ducks his head because he can feel the fury-fuelled heat of Camila’s gaze. She thinks this is him making excuses.

And perhaps he is. Perhaps this is the easy option, the coward’s way. To pretend he’s staying to be the good step-son, that he’s staying to look after Diane. But all three of them in the room know that Diane is woman that doesn’t need protection and he is not the kind of step-son that would offer it and sacrifice his own life. Or at least, that’s not the Robert they’ve come to know.

But Robert steels himself and looks Camila in the eye. There’s no hiding from this, not anymore. He can’t let their earlier conversation dissolve without him telling her everything she needs to hear. About the future, about himself. About Aaron. He needs to say the words out loud as much for her as for himself. And he needs Aaron to know, for the first real time that he’s not the man that graffiti defines him as. He might’ve been a coward and a liar once but that’s not going to be who he is for the rest of his life.

There’s a part of him, clenched with dread, that worries that the graffiti is a bigger warning sign. That he’s left things too late. Words are no good to Aaron now, although Robert knows he hasn’t told him enough. Hasn’t been honest enough about how he feels about him and about himself and about the life he’s lead. He’s gone back on his word and gone back to Camila even when there were glimmers that it wasn’t what he wanted. He’s proven to Aaron that he can’t be trusted. Maybe the graffiti is the final nail, that Aaron feels nothing for him anymore and there’s no hope for Robert redeeming himself. Even if Aaron did still have feelings for him, they’ve long been tainted by his lack of faith in Robert. Maybe it’s too late to put that right. Can he ever put that right? Is he fooling himself in the hopes that staying in Emmerdale he’d finally feel himself? That he could have something that felt real? With Aaron? Or would any future be one he has to take alone? For once this uncertainty, this lack of control, didn’t seem to matter. He needed to speak to Aaron.

He looks at Camila, knowing she wants him to tell Diane that they need to leave and about their fast decision last night. She wants him to break the news and to leave on time for the airport. But he won’t, he can’t.

“I need to talk to you,” he says to Camila, prepared for the way her placid face tightens. “But I have to go somewhere first.”

He doesn’t wait for her reaction, doesn’t listen. He takes his jacket from the bannister and leaves through the back door. Maybe this is the coward’s way, but he has to make things right, one person at a time.

*

There’s an imprint of Camila’s face in his head all the way as he walks to Paddy’s, passing the police car that’s parked up outside and readying to leave the premises. He can read her easily, the sparks in her eyes, the thinness of her lips. Underneath that warmth, her dainty posture is an anger he knows he’ll have to face again later. But first his knuckles grate against Paddy’s door, pain tanging through his nerves as he progresses to using his fist to thump his way in there.

“Leave,” is all Paddy says when he inches open the door.

Robert wedges his foot inside, grinding his teeth and jaw until he feels himself becoming solid, unmoveable. He can pretend.

“Five minutes,” he says. “That’s all I want.”

“What part of _leave_ didn’t you understand?”

“You don’t own him,” Robert says. “Let him decide. I just want to speak to him.”

“Well you can’t,” Paddy says, speaking slowly and lounging in every syllable like Robert has comprehension problems. “He isn’t here.”

“Let me come inside.” He doesn’t believe a word, pushing his weight against the door and trying to slip his gaze into the hallway and further to catch a glimpse, a sound, of him.

“He _isn’t_ here.”

“Where is he then?”

“He’s gone to do the right thing,” Paddy says. “And if you’ve any sense, you should do the same and stay the hell away from him.”

“Where’s he gone?” Robert asks.

He follows Paddy’s gaze, his chest clamping around the uneven heartbeat as Paddy looks in the direction of the pub. First he thinks of Camila inside the back room of the pub, hands over her face and trapping tears as Aaron tells her everything, but then as the engine of the police car thumps into life, he gets it. He knows exactly where Aaron has gone and where to find him.

 


	21. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaron hands himself into the police, but when he leaves the police station, upset and angered by the mistakes he's made, he's stopped by Robert who makes a desperate declaration.

**Aaron**

It’s not the first time he’s sat in an interview room, feet folded under the desk and gaze looping up the grey walls. There’s a cup of water in front of him, its drips pooling underneath like a blood wound. The officer opposite him has his head down, making the last notes ready for his charge sheets and breathing through one nostril in a way that regularly interrupts the silence. He even looks sort of familiar, but then it figures – the amount of time his family have the police buzzing round they’re almost long lost cousins.

He’d calmed down by the time he left Paddy’s and ended up at the station, the cut on his hand still smarting when he forgot about it and clenched his fist. Habit more than anything. The hurt and the anger had burst out of him in the trashing of the pub. Now he felt little else but emptiness. It would be stupid for him to believe there was any sort of love story untold, that things were somehow incomplete. Things with Robert were clear now, clearer than they’d ever been. It was a passing fantasy, a moment of madness as the clichés say. What nineteen year old hasn’t fallen fast for the wrong person and been so burnt they can’t ever see a way out of it? Maybe he placed too much importance on it anyway. Sex is like a drug and it messes with you. Maybe that was all it was, chemicals and adrenaline. He didn’t know any better.

Robert had known the reality and that’s why he’d gone back to her. Simple as that.

The police officer had wanted to know why he’d done it. Why he’d broken in and trashed the place, why he’d scrawled _LIAR_ on the walls of the pub, terrifying the harmless old landlady. Aaron had a lot of time to think about it on the drive to the police station and there was a dark, broken moment where he considered telling the truth, outing Robert and dragging their affair into the spotlight. But for what? Punishment? Revenge? How would he look then, some pathetic and lovestruck teenager lashing out because he’d been dumped. He thought about watching Robert’s world fall around him, the look on his girlfriend’s face. But the images of Robert’s misery, the justice of it, didn’t make Aaron feel anything but empty.

So in the end he concocted a lie, one he knew Robert would back up if he needed to. A quick way for him to save face and less destructive than the truth. He told the officer that Robert had promised him a business deal, that they’d had an agreement and that he’d promised Aaron the earth.

“There’s no paperwork to prove this so-called deal then?” the officer said, flicking a suitably unimpressed gaze up at Aaron.

“No,” Aaron said. “I took his word for it.”

“Bit naïve if you ask me.”

“I’m nineteen,” Aaron said. “Some businessman rocks up and offers me a dream deal to start my own business I’m going to jump at it, aren’t I? Alright it might have been stupid just to take his word for it but I…I trusted him.” Even in his tale Aaron could bring himself to hate Robert, not even after everything. The anger was just a warm thrum now.

The officer wasn’t particularly sympathetic to his story, or the reasons behind his revenge but the truth wouldn’t have painted him in a better light. Either way he was naïve and reckless. There’s such a thing as too good to be true.

A little while longer in silence and the officer gets up from his chair, tells him that’s enough questions for today. Aaron gets the impression the officer isn’t buying the story but it’s not a serious enough crime for him to sweat over. There’s people waiting in reception who’ve probably done worse. He’s led out down a narrow and fuzzily-lit corridor and to the desk where he signs more papers and is told they’ll be in touch. There’s a weariness in everything said, like he’s wasting their time. They give him a list of rules to follow and he’s to stay away from the pub and all parties involved.

“I can’t see that being a problem or anything seeing as I live in the house opposite,” he says dryly. The police station brings it out of him – he can’t help it. They deserve it sometimes, he thinks, the way they look you up and down – judging. He’s gobby, rebellious. He’s been too good and too quiet for too long.

He turns to leave, gaze headed straight out the double doors and into the daylight of freedom when he clocks a familiar face sat on one of the vinyl backed chairs. Him. Robert. Elbows on his knees, one leg jangling with discomfort, his head pointed to the floor. He looks nervous, hair tugged and pulled all over the place. Aaron wants to walk straight past him like he never even noticed he was there, like he doesn’t exist. But as Aaron’s feet stop, soles squeezing on the shined floor, Robert’s head looks up and they’re locked in a shared gaze. His throat squeezes, skin lighting up. He doesn’t register how he feels, it’s only the physical reaction burning up inside, a mashed combination of emotions hurting every part of him.  

Robert rises from his feet and Aaron’s heart thunders. He pushes past the elderly man walking in the opposite direction, clamouring for the doors, rushing towards the exit, for air, for an escape. He can’t be near him, he can’t stand to even look at him. That’s what Robert’s turned him into.  

“Aaron, wait!”

But he keeps walking, picking up his pace to a half run, knowing by the sound of Robert’s shouting that he’s trying to keep up too, the sound of boots hitting the pavement. He can out run Robert easily enough and he does, cutting through an alleyway, jumping over bike railings and ending up down a street he doesn’t know. It’s easier to run. It’s always been easier.

When there’s no sight of Robert, he sits on a low wall opposite a park, watching two mothers with buggies sharing a bag of crisps, their toddlers screeching on the swings. There are some school age kids sat on a bench under a tree, bunking off most likely – he remembers it well. How much simpler things had been then when all he had to worry about was impressing his mates by being the clown or getting in trouble. Girls liked him for that too, and they liked him even more when he showed no interest. Why had he felt the need to complicate things? Life had been so much simpler before.

His phone rings and he knows who it’ll be before he even sees the name, so he hits the red button. And again when he keeps calling. He leaves a voicemail, so his phone tells him. The screen lights up again. Another call. Seven times in total. On the eighth time Aaron considers chucking the phone across the park but instead he answers.

“I’m only gonna say this once, right? Fuck off. Fuck off out of my life and out of the village, alright?”

“Aaron, please. Just listen. I only want to talk to you!” His words rush out like he’s terrified Aaron will hang up on him for daring to breathe, that he won’t let him talk.

“No.”

Aaron hangs up again and kicks back his legs against the wall. Every thump vibrates through his body. He feels like doing more damage than just kicking a wall that won’t fight back. Why won’t Robert just leave him alone? There’s another call ringing through and this time he really does chuck it, throwing it so hard that it shatters in metal and glass against an imposing oak tree at the entrance of the park.

A blur of traffic on a nearby road must have obscured the sound – panting of breath, the thud of an approaching runner – until Aaron hears it closer and then, as it nears him, the breathing slows and the running becomes a brisk walk. A man running towards him.

Robert. Always Robert.

“What are you doing? Stalking me?!” Aaron jumps from the wall, ready to escape him again but Robert knows him too well now, knows his movement. He grabs him by the shoulders and even though Aaron yanks free, he stays. Fists balled, body jagged and flared. Primed for a fight.

“Educated guess,” Robert says. “I heard kids in the background and I knew you couldn’t have run far.”

Aaron’s jaw is churned up in fury. “Well congratulations. You found me. Now do one.”

“I know you trashed the pub,” Robert says. “Do you have any idea what state Diane’s in?”

It’s a different tactic, one that he isn’t expecting. It makes him freeze, posture softening as he reflects in his guilt about terrifying an innocent woman, a woman he likes. “I didn’t want to hurt her. It was you I was after.”

“I know,” Robert says.

“You got off lightly.”

“I know.”

“Well you’ve done your good step son bit,” Aaron says. “I’ve handed myself in, told them some bollocks about you offering me a business deal and then fucking me over. So why don’t you do everyone a favour and leave?”

“I’m meant to be,” Robert says, looking away. “But I needed…I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah well I’m done talking. Especially to you. You’re a liar. I meant what I wrote in the pub and you know it. It’s written all over your face. I won’t waste my time.”

“What you think you know-” Robert begins, but Aaron won’t let him finish, won’t hear it.

“What I know? That you’re a cheat and a liar? That you always have been? Because from where I’m standing that’s pretty accurate, isn’t it?”

His hands are in the pockets of his jeans but they jerk, his shoulders rising. “I’ll admit, yeah, I cheat and I lie. But it’s not all I am, Aaron. You know it’s not.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” he says, voice almost pleading. He takes a step nearer to Aaron, but in an almost reflex the gap widens between them again. Robert relents, keeping his distance. “You know me better than anyone.”

It stings to hear out loud what he fooled himself into believing once. That Robert could still say it when he’d never shown it to be true. Aaron scoffs, swallowing down the build of emotion clogging his throat. He can’t even look at him.

“I’m nothing to you.”

“Why am I here then? Why did I come to the police station? Why did I follow you?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron says, digging a fist into his eye to stop the tears from falling. He can feel Robert has moved closer again and the thought of him being near suffocates him. “Because you were worried I might tell everyone the truth?”

“That’s not it.”

“Well I don’t care,” he says. “I just want you gone. You made your choice. Her. Things are all cosy. I’ve seen you together. You’ve obviously not even told her about the money. It’s just lies on top of lies.”

“You’re wrong,” Robert says. Now he’s leaning against the wall, sheepish glances to the ground, to his crossed feet. “I told her everything. The whole lot, about stealing money from her. Everything. She hasn’t forgiven me for it. She wants me to work for it – both of it, to gain her trust again, to prove myself, and to pay her back.”

Something inside Aaron shatters and he realises all this time he’s still been kidding himself and living on that slim chance of hope. For all his denial and refusal, Aaron still wasn’t willing to let go of the fantasy. He wanted so desperately to believe. That Robert wouldn’t choose a life with her, that he would acknowledge that what they were was more than just a passing fling. It’s like he’s been holding his breath the whole time. But now he knows, without doubt, now he knows for sure. He can’t stop the tears. His voice is thick with them. He was never even an option to Robert, it had never even crossed his mind.

“I’m happy for you. Everything worked out the way you wanted.”

Aaron starts to walk away. It’s like the world closing in, cards tumbling. Emptiness claws at him. He knew this would come. He knew it. But he had never wanted to listen. And even when he had, there was still a part of him that wanted to scream. That wanted to prove everyone wrong. Because it _had_ meant more, it _had_ been more than just sex and just a plaything for Robert. Paddy was wrong. His own brain had been wrong. He’d felt it, in his heart.

But it hadn’t been real. His heart was just faulty. Prone to failure.

Robert stays put and Aaron won’t look back.

“Except it didn’t,” Robert calls out and Aaron wills himself not to listen. He tries concentrating on the traffic, the sounds of the park, the heaviness of his breathing as he quickens his pace. “I didn’t get what I wanted, did I? Because I lost you. I’ve lost you. Nothing’s worked out right. Because you hate me. And I’m…I’m in love with you.”

He’s still. They both are. Half breaths and unsteady focus, thoughts swallowed up by silence. His head tugs him forward, his heart keeps him there – frozen. He should have kept walking but something made him stop. He knows he’s shaking his head, he can feel it. There’s a pull on his foot, turning him slightly back until he can just make out Robert’s outline in his periphery.

“I mean it,” he says. “More than I’ve ever meant anything. I should have said it. I should have said something. But I couldn’t. I’ve been a mess. I am a mess.”

Aaron faces him, still saying nothing, still unable to move any closer than to look him in the eye.

“Say something then,” Robert says, freeing his hands from his pockets. It’s only now Aaron sees him, the real state of him. Tired, scruffy, skin sallow and grey.

“You don’t love me.”

His eyes are glassy and there’s a weak, desperate smile that struggles to lift the corners of his mouth. “You know I do. You felt it. I know you did.”

Aaron pulls his face away, eyes closing and face squeezed under his hand. His desire to run from this burns in his veins. He shakes his head again as if this will clear the picture. Maybe he’ll wake up, maybe when he opens his eyes Robert won’t be there.

“After everything…” Aaron says speaking into the dark, his eyes still pressed shut. “I can’t…How can I trust you?”

There are hands on his waist. Large, warm, familiar. He’s still there when Aaron opens his eyes. He can see his mouth, the warm and serious green in his eyes, the golden freckles on his weary skin. Robert pushes his forehead against Aaron’s. There’s a pulse there, between them. There always has been. He wasn’t wrong to hope. He’d felt it and it had been real.

Robert’s lips meet his. A kiss that feels like everything unsaid, like seasons of longing, of truths they’ve been unable to admit to. Aaron’s body unknots of its rage, Robert’s hands on him, soft promises mouthed against him and choices made. This isn’t the answer to everything, but the kiss is the start, a sweet untangling of fear, of everything that should have been said.

 

 


	22. Robert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After kissing Aaron, Robert makes a huge decision about his future.

**Robert**

Maybe he thought a kiss would solve it all. Would answer all his questions, make him brave, make him new. That sharing breath and warmth and space with Aaron would make him a stronger man, a better one. But when the moment comes, his hands still bunching the fabric of Aaron’s hoodie at his waist when their mouths part, his eyes opening, he realises the kiss only answers one question. He hasn’t lost Aaron. There’s still hope.

It isn’t a miracle. It’s a kiss. But it’s not _just_ a kiss either. It couldn’t be ‘just’ anything. Because his whole body feels it, it thrills every nerve until his dizzying heart makes him giddy with an anxiety he’s not experienced in years. Truth, fear, love – all at war inside of him, pulling him in opposite directions. Yet his feet are firmly planted, his forehead pressed against Aaron’s. He loves him. Like he didn’t think he could and didn’t think he should. It all feels so new and fresh and raw. Fragile. He never wants to let go in case letting go means losing him all over again. It’s the closest ever he’s felt to an ease inside of himself. Like he can breathe. 

Pulse flutters in Aaron’s throat, above his flimsy t-shirt and the teenage body spray – Robert watches it. Muscles and impulses in rapid reaction. He must feel the same, the choice of fight or flight.

“I want to believe you,” Aaron says.

Robert can hear a twinge of resistance in Aaron’s voice, like he’s already regretting the kiss. Robert’s stomach plummets. His words aren’t reliable anymore, _he_ isn’t reliable.

“I’ll prove it, okay? I promise you.”

*

It’s cold here. Open. Behind him the land slopes away to the road. Ahead it’s green with landmarks of grey stone. Names and epithets of people he’s never known. And a few of names he does. He didn’t stop at Sarah’s, he placed his hand on the curved top of the headstone and hoped she knew – that she’d always known – how sorry he was. But in front of his father’s grave, his name there too rising out from the stone, he knows he needs to speak.

Jack is around him, everywhere he looks. It’s every memory at the corner of his eye. It’s the glimpse of a dull coat and a flat cap. He keeps expecting to look up and meet his father coming out from the fields, expects to hear his voice raising and his furrowed look of disappointment. He knew what Jack’s reaction would be to him now if he was still alive. It’s so real he can feel the heavy slick of tears forming at his eyes, a tightness gripping his throat. He chokes a little, fingers pulling at the collar of his shirt.

“Dad.” It’s all he can get out at first. He clears his throat, roaming his eyes around the pleats of grey sky to clear his tears, muttering that it was a stupid idea coming here first.

The direction of the wind changes, blowing directly into his face and he stares down right at his father’s name.

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” he says. “I failed you. I’m a screw up. I mean, you always knew that, didn’t you? You could see it even when I was a kid. That’s the only good thing about you not being here. That you can’t see what a mess I’ve made of everything.”

He crouches at the gravestone, knuckles all white bone on the stone. He stops feeling self conscious about talking to the dead, it’s as if – if he concentrates hard enough – Jack is right there with him, a placid expression on his face as he takes it all in.

“I’m never going to be the man you wanted me to be, Dad,” he says, hearing the uneasy wobble in his throat. “I never was. I tried. God I tried. I think you hoped I’d grow into myself, grow up I suppose. I think you hoped I’d get there eventually. But I just don’t know…I don’t know how. I’ve been wandering from place to place my whole life. Running, hiding, lying. Hoping that somewhere would fit, that somewhere I’d be myself. At home.”

He wipes his face roughly with his hand, irritated by his vulnerability. He clears his throat, exhaling into the sky.

“I don’t know if I know how. But I’m trying. I’m starting. I need to be myself - not your son or the man you wanted me to be. That’s not real, it’s not me.” He sighs shakily, standing and touching his father’s name with his fingertips. “And if I really want to try. Then I have to start with being honest.”

*

She’s surrounded by bags, a suitcase handle pulled upright. “Where have you been? I have been calling and calling.”

He tries his hardest to look Camila in the eye as he enters the room. It’s the least he owes her. He places his keys on the sideboard and leans against it, fingers pressing into the wood.

“Have you been crying?” she asks, her irritation at him walking out and ignoring her calls momentarily stalled. “Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Look, I don’t want to make this into another issue. I’ve just spent the last hour comforting Diane while you’ve been god knows where. And we’re going to be late. Tell me on the way.” Camila grabs the handle of one suitcase, pulling a holdall onto her arm and leaving two bags for him to carry.

He can see the hours ahead playing out in front of him. How easy it would be to get swept up into that world again, to play the part. He could make himself be happy with her if he tried. But he knew he’d end up failing, falling into old habits and seeking other bodies for a contentment he couldn’t find when he was living his life half-heartedly. He could feel the years draining away, his prospects of happiness, completeness withering further and further away from him.

Robert corrected his position, standing upright. He felt a door close, a static noise, a sick swell of uncertainty surround him.

“I can’t,” he says, calling out after her, watching her linger in the doorway. “I can’t go with you. I can’t leave.”

The holdall slips down her shoulder a little when she turns, arms waving in exasperation. “Diane’s completely fine. She doesn’t need you to protect her.”

“This isn’t about Diane. This is about me.”

“Robert. This isn’t your home any more. Okay? You don’t belong here.” Her impatience bleeds out of her voice, sounding colder than she normally would. She’d turned fully around now, trying a softer approach with him, trying to take his hands and lead him away.

He’s resolute. But he can’t have her touch him, can’t look at her.

“I’m in love with someone else.”

He knows he has to look at her. He has to so that she can see in his face that this is no joke. The shock on her face is sharp, cold. Quick. Her cheeks are bloodless and then violently red. Everything passes through her face as she processes it all. He fell for her because she was fire and now she flames up in front of him.

“Someone else…someone _here_?”

“Yes.” It’s soft, muffled. But she hears it, takes a step away from him like he’d delivered it in a sucker-punch.

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” He backs away from her, rubbing his hands through his hair and trying to find the right words, knowing such words don’t exist. There’s no way to soften this, to make it neater or nicer to hear. It was always going to hurt her, _he_ was always going to hurt her. But how can he put all of this – who he is, who he’s afraid to be – into just words?

“I want to know.”

“It’s just…it’s complicated, alright?” He feels sick with it. He had planned on telling her as little as he needed to, for his own selfish reasons admittedly but he hadn’t braced himself for the rest of his life shattering with a wildfire spread of his biggest secrets.

“Complicated? You’re giving me excuses when all this time…!”

He remembers at the graveside, the promises he made to his father’s memory. The honesty to others and to himself. He remembers Aaron, his fragile lack of faith. His mouth, his voice, his eyes. The way they parted like he couldn’t let himself believe.

“It’s a man. That’s…That’s who I’ve been seeing. That’s who I’m in love with. That’s why I can’t leave.”

“A man?” She sits down, unable to ask questions and sat there staring ahead but moving her lips through queries she has but can’t vocalise. He can sense her scrolling though memories in her head, testing them against questions she had, doubts setting in. He could imagine all the things she wondered – whether he’d been faking with her, why she wasn’t enough for him, how long he’d known, if there had been others. “So this whole time…you’ve…you’re…”

“I’m not…” Robert says, still uncomfortable enough to keep up the eye contact for long periods. Gay – he’s not that.

“Well you must be! You’re in love with him!”

“I loved you,” Robert says, listening to her scoff but carrying on regardless. “What we had, it was real. You were everything I wanted.”

“Whatever you call yourself then! Bisexual,” she says. It feels like a cold bolt of relief to hear someone else say it, confirm it, so that he doesn’t have to think too long and hard about it himself. She rants at him in Spanish, he understands most of it even in her fury. The language she uses against him hurts less when it's unfamiliar.

“I call you a cheater. You loved me? This is some kind of joke,” she says.

“I loved you. Okay? It was real. The life we had, it was everything I ever dreamed of. But it just…it wasn’t enough…I can’t explain it,” Robert says. “It was like coming back here and being confronted with everything I’ve tried to avoid…”

“Well thank you,” she says, undiluted fury in her voice. Her mouth is snarled at him as he shrinks away. “Thank you for inviting me to become a casualty of your _self discovery_. For letting me waste years of my life on you. As you sit there, telling me about our future. All the while you are cheating. And lying. And stealing from me.”

She slaps him across the face and the hot sting of it lingers long after she’s stepped away.

“You used me. A bank. A body. Some sort of normality.”

“I never meant to.”

“But you did,” she says. She wipes her face with both hands and then collects up her bags like she had been doing only moments ago. This time she doesn’t expect him to follow. “You’ll hear from my lawyer in future. Repayment. Compensation too. I’d take you to the police but I can’t stand to look at you any longer.”

“Camila, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t bother. You keep it. You've taken everything else from me.”

He watches her leave. No final showdown, no change of heart, no turning back. He knows he’ll only hear from her now through the words of a man in a suit, through headed letters and invoices. When the door judders shut and the backroom of the pub drifts in an uneasy silence, Robert sits with his head in his hands. It’s not relief he feels, or loss, or anything as definitive. It’s fear, uncertainty. Telling Camila was only the first step, one of hundreds, several which he can’t even bear to think of. What people will say, what people will think. He will tell people he doesn’t care, he will lie and he will front it. But he knows at night or when he’s alone he will feel it again, the queasiness and unfamiliarity of finally being in his own skin.

He needs air. He needs to see the world still turning before word spreads, before he is forced to open his wounds for all to see. He guesses that Diane will be next and he’ll bear the brunt of her upset and shock, all the while knowing that whatever her reaction, his father’s would have been worse had he discovered his son’s phase wasn’t just a hormonally charged moment of confusion, but a living part of him.

He decides to take a walk, to wander as far a distance as his memories won’t bother him and heads for the bridge that crosses the stream. There are memories here too so he keeps walking, walking until it’s all mud and undergrowth and thickening grey clouds overhead. And then he hears footsteps scuffing closer, rustling of brushes being shoved aside.

And then there’s Aaron, standing in front of him. Looking…how does he look? Scared? Surprised? Nervous? Unsure? That makes two of them. Robert’s certain he can hear Aaron’s heart beating away, waiting to hear Robert’s excuses, waiting to be let down again.

“I saw her leave," Aaron says finally.

He doesn’t put his heart on the line and Robert knows he’s partly to blame. Neither of them are good at this. He nods at Aaron when all he wants to do is reach out and touch him. But this isn’t his decision.

“What did you tell her?” he asks.

“The truth. That I was in love with someone else.”

Aaron looks at his feet, the mud-marked trainers. They’re not words he’s used to hearing or accepting. Robert takes a step closer, trying not to sound like he’s begging but feeling like they’re on the precipice of something. There’s only one way he wants to jump and that’s together.

“And you?” Robert says, struggling to swallow. “Do you still want me?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I hope you've enjoyed this story. I've loved reading all the comments, your frustrations with Robert etc etc and thank you for your continued support and patience.


	23. Aaron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter. Five months on Aaron and Robert adjust to life as a couple in the village now that everyone knows.

**Aaron**

**_Five Months Later_ **

He’s awake already when the alarm goes off, though he tried to pretend he wasn’t. It was too light to fall back to sleep when he first drifted out of his dreams, summer sunshine bleaching the whole room. It’s going to be a hot day, he can already feel it. Too hot to be working, to be in a neon community service hi-vis collecting litter at the side of the road. Too hot to deal with the pricks he has to work alongside with, the ones that shove him around a bit when all he wants to do is keep his head down.

The alarm repeats again before he’s quick enough to reach across and stop it and there’s a grunt beside him, a rustle of covers. Only momentarily had he forgotten he wasn’t alone and then when the memory returns in full physical clarity, does he switch the alarm onto snooze and roll over to greet the man in his bed.

Technically speaking, not _his_ bed, but Robert’s.

His hair is all over the pillow, face smushed into it, mouth gaped and one eye half-open. “Alarm,” he says, like Aaron doesn’t know.

“Five more minutes,” Aaron says. Compared to Robert he feels almost like a morning person. But then he must hear something in Aaron’s tone, because he perks up, props himself on one arm.

“Five more minutes for what?”

It’s been a long road to get here. Still ongoing really, considering this is only the fourth time Aaron’s stayed over at the pub and Robert being allowed to stay at Smithy’s is off the table indefinitely. _I’ll win him round eventually,_ Robert had promised weeks ago, on an occasion that Aaron was particularly crestfallen that they were still having to sneak around – despite everyone knowing about them. Aaron had rowed with Paddy about it over and over and Paddy kept reminding him of his age, of his temper, of Robert’s unreliability and history. But it’s not like he had many options and his mum had stepped out of her indifferent and distant parenting style to lecture him on losers and cheaters, before he reminded her that she was just as bad. And that he was now a Dingle through and through. Every last one of them with questionable taste. It wasn’t that long ago she was clinging onto Carl when everyone told her so, he’d reminded her as they sat sullenly opposite each other in the cafe.

“Yeah? And look how well that turned out,” she said, muttering _lying cheating scumbag_ under her breath. He thought if anyone could understand it might be Chas, but he realised he’d been far too optimistic when he saw her coming at him with her eyes wide and finger already pointed. _You’re too young for all this_ , she’d said, _too young and too trusting. Mark my words._ He didn’t want to remind her that his gut instincts about Carl had been right all along so he kept quiet knowing he and Robert wouldn’t get an invitation for tea any time soon.

No one in his circle of family, as it turned out, were fans of Robert Sugden – and he wasn’t exactly very good at biting his tongue and being on best behaviour either – but they were muddling along just fine. Robert carried around all the bravado of his youth still, managing to rub up everyone the wrong way, even if it was held up as a mask to hide how much he hated everyone knowing the secret he’d kept for so long.

But it would be wrong to say things are just “fine”. Aaron is happy. Happier than he’s ever been even though he’s not the sort of person to shout it from the rooftops. And in love. He hasn’t managed to stay it out loud yet, but he knows that Robert can tell – has always been able to tell.

Aaron is still getting used to Robert’s quirks, his strangeness, his morning breath and bad habits. The luxury of sharing a bed and indulging in slightly lazy, musty morning sex. In a way it’s like they rewound things. He went from cautious, curious first-timer, rushing through the intensity of lust and longing and the gut-wrenching pain of strong feelings, and now they’re back to something that resembles dating – learning and challenging and growing. There are times where he feels the need to put the brakes on, because Robert inspires an intensity in him that makes everything feel so consuming and overwhelming, and he needs grounding. This isn’t a normal first relationship, but then maybe he was never meant for normal.

Robert kisses him long and slow before Aaron tears himself away from bed. He doesn’t feel entirely comfortable staying over yet, things are still a little weird with Diane – and it’s even harder for Robert since his whole life changed – so he dresses to head back to Paddy’s and grab a shower.

“What time you done with community service?” Robert asks, stretching across both sides of the bed.

 That has been the easiest transition between sneaking around and living as an almost out-and-proud couple – the sex. Robert is still insatiable, needy and surprisingly unselfish. And Aaron wouldn’t change a thing.

“Midday,” Aaron says, sitting on the edge of the bed to tie his laces. “But then I’ve got a few hours of college after.”

“I’m beginning to regret suggesting it. I hardly see you!”

“Yeah you do,” Aaron says, laughing and leaning over him for one last kiss goodbye. “You see me all the time.”

“Not enough.”

He tuts. “See you later.”

It had been after another long day at the garage when Robert had suggested it to him. Aaron had gone straight to the pub after he’d finished up, not even bothering to change but tying the blue overalls around his waist, and Robert was on a shift serving behind the bar. He wasn’t especially good at it and for the first few weeks Aaron had been a backseat driver to his barman skills, giving him tips and watching Diane tut around him and take over, Moira become increasingly frustrated with his efforts. But he was learning and it was an agreement he’d come to with Diane – to work there to earn his keep. Things were thawing between Robert and Diane but she had told him outright she was very disappointed in his behaviour towards Camila and she wasn’t just going to accept his apologies overnight even if she did give him a place to stay. Working there and living rent free, she told him, meant that all his money needed to go back to Camila to pay his debts. Aaron had even sweet-talked Debbie into letting Robert do a few shifts at the garage, on the agreement he and Aaron wouldn’t work the same ones. Cain hated the idea unsurprisingly.

“Pint?” Robert had said when he entered the pub and Aaron was slightly self-conscious at the way Robert seemed to light up on his arrival, blanking other customers he was serving. He wasn’t anyone’s favourite barman except Aaron’s but he didn’t mind.

“Throw in some crisps as well, will you? I’m starving.”

Aaron was buzzing, even though all his muscles thrummed with tiredness. He gabbled all evening about clutches and engines and some guy who’d had a seriously impressive motor. One that they couldn’t fix though, they didn’t have the right expertise apparently. Robert listened, diving back and forth between disgruntled customers and ones who complained when he got their orders wrong, face softened with a smile that made Aaron’s insides liquid. He had to avoid eye contact every now and again, Robert made him feel alive and noticed – all lit up in floodlights – like no one else could. He liked talking to Robert, liked laying there beside him and just saying everything about his day – or nothing, even – and let Robert fill in the silences with his own assumptions and observations. It wasn’t like talking to a mate, having Adam motormouth at him, every anecdote like a competition, it was more than that. And Aaron hadn’t realised how much of him had wanted that as well as their physicality.

“It’s just so frustrating, you know? Debbie just turns away these customers and I would kill – I mean KILL – to work on cars like theirs. But it’s training and insurance…” Aaron’s voice drifted off and he shook his head. “Sorry I’m going on.”

“Don’t apologise,” Robert said. “I like seeing you all fired up.”

Aaron gave him a half-hearted roll of the eyes and offered him a crisp. It never seemed to matter that he was meant to be working, Robert always loitered to his end of the bar. Debbie might’ve had a point about them not working together at the garage.

“You should think about running your own garage, you know. Better still, make Debbie an offer and buy her out. You could turn that place around with your enthusiasm.”

“Robert, I’m nineteen. I’m skint.”

“Now maybe, yeah. Give it a few years. Get a few training courses in your belt, a bit more experience. You’d be perfect. And you’re living rent free so all your money could go in a little pot towards it…”

“Pipe dream,” Aaron said.

“Maybe. But you’ve gotta start somewhere.”

“S’pose.”

“Well I know you could do it,” Robert said and there was an all too brief touch of his thumb against the side of Aaron’s hand. It was private, meaningful. It’s all he’d ever wanted.

*

After community service, Aaron heads back to Smithy for another shower before the hands-on tutorial at college starts. Paddy’s at home, making lunch and props himself in the doorway when Aaron gets in.

“Oh here he is, the wanderer returns.”

“I haven’t wandered anywhere, Paddy. You know where I’ve been. I stayed over at the pub.” He waits for a comment, or a change of expression from Paddy but he has obviously decided not to waste his energy today.

“Did you get any grief this morning…with the…you know…”

“Community service. You can say it.” Paddy had already given him countless talks on it, on lessons learned and consequences of his actions. But he _was_ sorry, he’d been sorry the moment he’d done it. More sorry about its impact on Diane and when everything had come out about him and Robert he’d gone over there to talk to her, to explain himself and say sorry. He knew it’s partly why she took so long to let him stay over night at the pub with Robert. She’d even pulled him aside to talk to him about it.

“It’s not that I have a problem with the two of you,” she’d said. “And even though Robert telling me that he likes men as well as women came as a shock, well, it’s his life and I have no issues with it. And that’s not to say I wasn’t surprised when he told me his feelings for you. I was. But he’s had a complicated life and he’s made a lot of bad choices, especially the last few months if what he’s told me is anything to go on, and I just want the pair of you to take it easy. Enough people have been hurt in all this.”

“Diane, I swear. I am so sorry for getting you involved in it, what with the trashing of the pub. I was mixed up.”

“I know. And that’s exactly what I mean. People getting caught in the cross fire. That poor Camila girl more than me. And don’t think I put all the blame at your door, I know what Robert’s like and he’s old enough to know better. And I’m glad you owned up to what you did to the pub…but I can’t pretend it’s all magically fine, Aaron.”

“I know.”

“Both of you are reckless, acting before you think. And it worries me.” She took a long pause and Aaron wondered if he should fill the silence with more apologies, more assurances that he wasn’t going to do anything stupid and that he was learning his lesson out there in the cold scrubbing off other people’s graffiti. But she spoke again, closing up some of anxieties. “But there’s something about Robert now…he seems settled almost. Like I might finally be able to stop worrying about him. And he seems to think a lot of you. But give me time, pet. I need to know I can trust you both.”

She hadn’t even given formal permission in the end, like they were teenagers being allowed to share a bed for the first time under her roof. She’d just made herself a brew while they were watching a movie in the backroom. Not cosied up, but close, intimate in their casual touching and in-jokes. She’d looked at Robert and then at Aaron and said: “Don’t make too much noise when you come up to bed, boys. I’ll see you in the morning.”

They had been very quiet, very careful, and Robert had even stuck his dressing gown at the bottom of the door as if it would muffle the sound of them. Robert wrapped him in his arms that night and Aaron finally felt like he could breathe.

And in the morning when Victoria realised he’d stayed over, she flitted around them like any little sister would. She found the whole thing weird and kind of gross she said, clarifying that she didn’t mean the two blokes thing, just that it was her brother and her ex and she just couldn’t picture it.

“We’re not asking you to picture it,” Robert had said trying to get her to go away and get the bus to school.

She’d had loads of questions for Robert when he first told her. Wanted to know every last detail about his sexuality, how he knew, how long he’d known, did their Dad know and so on.

“I don’t have all the answers yet,” Robert had said to Aaron later, only hours after he’d come out to Diane and Vic and sat tightly pressed in on himself and anxious about word spreading through the village.

“You don’t need to. You’re only just getting there…”

He told Aaron he needed time, that his discovery aged fifteen that he liked other boys came with a burst of his dad’s temper and that had scared him into a lifetime of hiding.

“You don’t have to rush,” Aaron had said, the words coming naturally to him, words he’d needed to hear himself once. “And you don’t need to hide anymore.” Aaron put his arm around him and they shared a tender kiss, one which Robert eased away from and asked him not to tell anyone else about what he’d said about his father. Aaron had never seen him that vulnerable and held him until he’d become himself again, composed and strong.

Neither of them were the sort to kiss in the street or announce their relationship to the entire village through a megaphone. They fielded questions mostly, said as little as possible even though they were the subject of whispers from the usual suspects in the pub and the café. Aaron didn’t mind that they were both keeping things lowkey – it was new ground for both of them. Slow and private was more than fine by him.

At Smithy, Aaron pushes past Paddy and makes himself a drink, telling him about what his tasks were out in the community with the rest of the litter pickers. There were a few lads giving him a hard time, but it was more of a challenge because he knew he couldn’t fight back. They were harmless really, like yappy dogs that hadn’t been taught any house rules.

“Okay,” Paddy says. “And how was last night? At the pub? How was Diane?”

“I didn’t really sit down and have a chat with her,” Aaron says. “If you want to know if I’m still with Robert, then the answer’s yes.”

“I’m not _trying_ to be difficult.”

“I know. You don’t like him and what he did. It’s fine, Paddy. I’m not holding a grudge.”

“I worry about you.”

“I know you do. But I’m old enough to make my own decisions. And mistakes-“

“Mistakes!” He chuckles a little, widening his eyes as if to make it obvious that the mistake here is Robert.

“So let me make them, yeah? Because he’s not going anywhere. And I want to be with him.”

*

It takes another month in the end for Paddy to agree to let Robert stay over. Paddy stays well out of the way, popping his head through the door of the lounge to say he’s off out with Marlon to the pub and he doesn’t expect them to wait up. He doesn’t quite direct his conversation to Robert, but there’s a brief nod of his head and a skip in Aaron’s heart that feels like progress.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be his favourite person,” Robert says.

“Not even close,” Aaron says, glancing at him from the side and enjoying the way the jokes he makes form creases in Robert’s face, roundness in his cheeks. There’s little better than being the cause of someone’s smile, especially when that someone is Robert. And he looked happier, less uptight than when they’d first met anyway. Even Adam had noticed and commented on it. He was still struggling with the concept of them dating, that Aaron had fallen for someone he’d so passionately rallied against.

“But mate, you thought he was an arsehole!”

“Still do,” Aaron had said, shrugging. “Just think there’s more to him than that now.”

Adam had been happy in his own way, encouraging even. But then he had developed a weird sort of hero-worship when it came to Robert so that was no surprise. He liked him even more when he saw what affect he was having on Aaron.

“You’re smiling…you’re enjoying college. I don’t even know you, man!”

On the sofa, Aaron’s arm brushes against Robert’s and the backs of their hands touch, first accidental, until Aaron realises he likes how it feels and stretches his fingers to touch again.

“I don’t care what Paddy thinks about you,” Aaron says. He turns his hand so that his little finger caresses the back of Robert’s hand and watches a tingle shiver up his arm. The film plays on the screen but neither of them are watching anymore, the images meaningless, the sound a blur.

“Don’t you?” His voice is soft and dark, a dare hidden somewhere underneath.

Aaron leans into him, kissing his mouth with a steady assurance. He tastes warm, all beer and heat as Aaron slides his tongue into his mouth and lets his hand track the shape of Robert’s chest. Robert catches his wrist when Aaron’s hand cups his cock, hard and locked in his jeans and gives him a pointed look. “You want to risk the sofa after last time?”

“Upstairs then.”

When they have sex now, it means more than Aaron could say out loud. But he tells Robert in touches, his hand on the small of his back and the mouthed sighs against his neck, the tight half-cries and the eye contact that lasts longer than he ever felt possible. He rakes his hands through Robert’s hair and thrills in the way his body makes Robert’s twist and turn and collapse. The way he can make Robert swear and laugh and sweat. The way each other’s names sound in their mouths, pressed up against each other and thighs touching. The way afterwards all they can do is look at each other and try and suppress that rush of adrenaline in panting and laughter.

And when they curl up together afterwards in the dark, almost sleeping but not quite, and Robert moans about working in the pub and the garage, and talks dreamily about the days he’ll be out of this financial mess and owning his own business again, Aaron listens to him talk. And loves him.

“The stupid thing is,” Robert says, his sentences starting to slur with sleep. “I didn’t want to come back here, but now…” his head falls to the side to look at Aaron, to run his hand down the side of his face, heavy-lidded, lopsided smile. “It’s actually starting to feel like home.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your support during this story. It means a lot. I hope you've enjoyed it - I've loved reading all the comments!


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